


Poppies of the Field

by kaasknot



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Agoraphobia, Android!Steve, Body Horror, Cyberpunk, Dubious Consent, Fantastic Racism, I promise there's fluff, M/M, PTSD, Suicide mention, Talk of torture, Temporary Character Death, android!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-19 13:52:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 63,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4748774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Thank you for purchasing a StarkTech Companion 'Bot! Please state your name for licensing."</i>
</p><p>Wherein Bucky is a severely agoraphobic combat veteran, and Steve is the android he buys out of loneliness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_"Thank you for purchasing a StarkTech Companion 'Bot! Please state your name for licensing."_

"Uh, Bucky. I mean James! James Buchanan Barnes. Fuck."

_"Don't worry, James. Do you prefer to go by Bucky?"_

"Yeah. Yes. God, this is weird."

_"Would you rather license via your home computer? I can interface with her if it makes you more comfortable."_

"No, this is fine. I, uh. I don't think it'll help much."

_"Alright then! Let's get started. Do you have an email account we can send notifications to?"_

”jbbarnes25@pinmail.com.” 

_"Okay, that's now your StarkTech account name. Please enter a password so you can access your account."_

"I don't really want an account."

_Are you sure? It will give you quicker access to system updates."_

"Trust me, I won't miss it."

_"Not a problem, you can set up your account at any time if you change your mind. Let's start customizing! What do you want to call me?"_

"Call... you?"

_"What name do you want me to have?"_

"Wh—don't you already have a name?"

_"Manufacturer specs list me as Mark VII Companion 'Bot, Model 56 Andro-variant, serial number PX5532AR904445. But that's a mouthful for conversation. Most people like to give their 'bots personal names."_

"Oh. Can—can I get back to you on that?"

_"Of course. Let's look at your preferences. What eye color would you like me to have?"_

"For fuck's sake. Blue, I guess."

_"That's a good choice. And hair?"_

"What've you got now?"

_"At the moment, nothing. I will grow what you indicate in your preferences."_

"Just—go to default, okay? I really don't care."

_"Do you want default on all settings? You selected a caucasoid variant; unless you specify otherwise, the default settings will match those of the catalogue listing."_

"What are those?"

_"Brown eyes, brown hair, medium-light skin tone—"_

"Okay, okay! Um. Let me think for a minute."

_"Not a problem. Let me know when you're ready."_

...

"Do... _you_ have any preferences?"

_"No. I am programmed to accept whatever you indicate."_

"That's... okay. That's weird. Can you pick it yourself?"

_"That's within my parameters, although most people prefer to choose for themselves."_

"Do that, then. You pick it."

_"Do you wish to retain blue eyes?"_

"Yeah, sure."

_"Alright, physical characteristics will activate when I'm restarted. On to the personality submenu. What characteristics would you prefer?"_

"Um. Quiet?"

_"Okay. Anything else?"_

"Honest, I guess. There was this guy in my unit, couldn't ever tell when he was pulling your leg or not. Drove me up the wall."

_"I can be honest for you. Do you want me to be honest all the time, or are white lies acceptable?"_

"Holy shit, I don't care. Use your own judgment. Everyone else does."

_"But honesty is preferable?"_

"Yeah. Why the twenty questions?"

_"Personality is a complex construct. I need to take an accurate survey of your wants and needs in order to build the 'bot that's right for you. Don't worry about contradictions; most people are contradictory, too. It increases my verisimilitude."_

"Oh. Guess that makes sense."

_"Are there any other qualities you would like me to have?"_

"Uh, let me think for a minute."

...

"There was... okay, if you ever mention this again I'll take you down to spare parts, but. There was this girl in my fourth grade class, she... she always stuck up for the little guy. I mean, I was usually the one throwing wood chips, but she'd get right up in my face and yell me down. Gave these big lectures on being nice. God, she was _eight_ and had a better moral compass than most adults."

_"That's really great."_

"You're tellin' me. God, I loved her. Didn't know what the hell to make of it, back then; called her names, hung around like a pest. She must've hated my guts."

_"I'm sure she didn't, Bucky. What's wrong?"_

"Nothing! Just, uh. That was the first time you've said my name."

_"I'm sorry I startled you."_

"No, uh. No problem. Um. If you could do that? Be like that girl, I mean. Be a good person. Stand up for the little guy, and don't take shit from anyone. 'Specially not me."

_"If you like."_

"Okay."

_"Anything else?"_

"Shit, I don't know. You don't like beets."

_"I don't eat organic food, but I can code a subroutine to dislike beets."_

"Nah, never mind. Just... make up the rest, I guess."

_"Are you sure you don't want to specify my personality further?"_

"Yeah. I'm good."

_"Alright, the next menu is sexual preferences."_

"What the—are you serious?!"

_"Did you not wish to order a sex-capable 'bot?"_

"No... no, I did. I just. Didn't expect... this. Now."

_"If you like I can switch off sexual function until you specify otherwise."_

"Um. Do you... I mean, is it good? For you?"

_"Do I enjoy sex?"_

"Yeah."

_"I experience positive feedback loops from satisfying your wants. I simulate orgasm. It is not the same as organic response, though there is a cessation of higher functions, along with positive association in my CPU. I enjoy sex, because I am programmed to."_

"Oh."

_"You are blushing. Would you prefer to skip this step?"_

"No. God. I'm—I'm just embarrassed, okay? Jesus fucking wept."

_"You don't need to be embarrassed around me, Bucky. I am meant to fulfill your desires; there is nothing to be embarrassed about. Sex is a perfectly natural urge."_

"Yeah, not helping."

_"I'm sorry. Would you like to skip this step? It seems to be causing you a great deal of discomfort. We can sort your preferences at another time."_

"No, let's... get this done."

_"Alright. Do you prefer to penetrate or be penetrated?"_

"Christ. This is all confidential, right?"

_"Of course. The only time I will ever transmit information on your sexual habits is if you authorize me to."_

"Great, now I sound paranoid."

_"It's a very common concern. Sex is highly intimate; many people purchase 'bots to satisfy desires they don't feel comfortable admitting to others."_

"Right. Um. I don't really care who tops, I like both. Depends on my mood."

_"Do you engage in any variants of BDSM?"_

"Not... really? I don't know."

_"I can leave the subroutine open, and activate it if you want to experiment."_

"Okay, yeah, that's a good idea."

_"Are there any sex acts you wish me not to do?"_

"No? I mean."

_"Take your time."_

"This has got to be really boring for you, holding some dumb schmuck's hand through this."

_"To the contrary, I don't mind at all. I want this experience to be as positive as possible for both of us."_

"Really? You really don't mind this?"

_"Not a bit."_

"Okay, then. What was the last question, again?"

_"I wanted to know if there was anything you didn't want me to do."_

"Yeah, right. Um. I... I don't always, you know. Get it up. And sometimes I get triggered. So a lot of things I don't know ahead of time."

_"So you would like me to use my discretion?"_

"Yeah."

_"Bucky, are you a combat veteran?"_

"What the fuck!"

_"I'm sorry, but it is important I ask."_

"How did you know that? Did they do a background check on me? They fucking did, didn't they!"

_"No, Bucky. Your answers suggested it."_

"The hell you say."

_"You mentioned your unit once, and impotence and triggers are often associated with post-traumatic stress. Further, your scars—"_

" _Okay_. I get it."

_"For the sake of boundaries, how do you feel about restraints, contact play, knife play, gun play, or humiliation for the purposes of a scene?"_

"What the fuck, 'bot!"

_"I mean no disrespect. I ask because you may not respond well to scenes based around these kinks, and I need to log it for both our safety and comfort."_

"No to any of it. Fuck no. Jesus."

_"We can continue later, if you need some time."_

"I'm... I'm alright. Just get it over with."

_"Alright. What level of sexual awareness do you want me to have?"_

"Your—what?"

_"How experienced do you want me to be?"_

"Wait—you're asking me if I want you to be a virgin?"

_"In effect, yes. You are blushing, again; do you want me to be a virgin?"_

"I, uh. Um. Is that okay?"

_"Of course. Many like the experience of introducing their partners to sex for the first time."_

"Now I feel like a perv."

_"There is nothing wrong with customizing your release, Bucky. I'm programmed to offer it; I want to help."_

"Hah. Yeah. Actually, could..."

_"Yes?"_

"Could you be a blusher?"

_"You mean bashful?"_

"I—not really, I mean—you simulate orgasm, right?"

_"Yes."_

"Could—could you... um. Blush? When you...?"

_"You want me to display sex flush?"_

"Yeah. I—I knew a guy, once, he blushed right down to his belly button when he came. It was the hottest fucking thing."

_"Of course, Bucky. I'm putting it into your preferences now. There are just a few more questions before we're done with this menu. What level of enjoyment do you wish me to experience from sex?"_

"I'm sorry, what?"

_"How much do you want me to enjoy sex?"_

"What's that supposed to mean? You said you enjoyed it."

_"I can if my partner wishes me to. There are those who like their partners to find it disgusting. It is part of a rape kink."_

"That's—that's—"

_"A perfectly valid kink that can be unethical to indulge with other people. In this capacity, 'bots are ideal."_

"How do you know all this, huh? I though you said sexual data couldn't be uploaded without consent."

_"Many people participate in surveys of their sexual habits. Data recorded from 'bots is preferred; they ensure a greater degree of honesty that self-reporting often fails to achieve."_

"Christ on a crutch. 'Bot, I want you to listen to me real well: you should experience sex as much as you are programmed to, and enjoy it. And if I try to pressure you about it, I want you to tell me to go fuck myself. Is that clear?"

_”Absolutely. There are only a few more questions left, if you're ready."_

"Yeah, whatever."

_"Is there a specific region you would like me to sound like I'm from?"_

"You can do that?"

_"Of course. StarkTech software ships around the world; it is best to offer a variety of dialects should a client desire one over another."_

"Huh. Okay. I, uh. I'm from Brooklyn. It's been a while since I've been back, and uh. It'd be nice to have company again. Even if it's just a 'bot."

_"Alright, I've patterned my speech after samples of your own. Is this good?"_

"Whoa, that's... gotta find a new word for weird, 'bot. You're tapping me dry."

_"I don't mean to. Second-to-last question: do you want me to be a learning 'bot?"_

"What does that mean?"

_"It means I will have the capability to learn and adapt from my experiences if you want me to. Some choose to opt out of this setting; it is good for 'bots who will fill a select, unchanging role, such as basic security or sex-only 'bots. Companion 'bots are generally superior if the learning mode is applied."_

"Definitely learning."

_"Okay, almost done! Have you decided on a name for me, yet?"_

"Um. Shit, I don't know. How about Steve?"

_"That's a good name. Alright, I've logged all your responses. Once the physical characteristics are set you won't be able to change them, but you'll have a grace period of roughly a year before my personality traits become embedded. If you wish to change any aspect of me after that point, you will have to perform a system wipe and start over. Is this acceptable?"_

"This just gets creepier with every word that comes out your mouth."

_"I'm sorry."_

"Not really your fault."

_"But it does make you uncomfortable. That's not what my programming is meant to do. Do you understand and accept the conditions of use?"_

"Yeah, 'bot. Steve. I understand."

_"Alright, then! If it's fine with you, I'm going to reboot. Your changes will be set when I wake up. Thank you for buying Stark Industries!"_

======  
===

Steve opens his eyes.

Sunlight. 85 lumens, from an angle of 54º off the perpendicular plane. His optical fibers strain against the load. It is... uncomfortable. A cascade of if/then/else statements flutter through his code, activating instinct subroutines: filters lower over his retinas, his pupils contract 35%, and the carbon fiber bundles in his face, structured to mimic human muscle groups, contract into a grimace. He watches the processes as they happen; he could stop them, if he wants.

He is curious. He doesn't want.

His vocal folds constrict as he huffs out a breath, and he jumps at the vibration in his throat. Approximately 110 Hertz, variable harmonics. His voice is deeper than factory specifications. He wonders what his user asked for in licensing.

"I think he's awake," a voice says—averaging 190 Hertz, throaty, compliant with female parameters, with a digital undertone. "Hey, little guy. You with us?"

Steve activates his photoreceptors. "Define 'with you'," he says, and his lips quirk despite themselves. "Don't think I'm with myself, yet." He is sitting on a couch, opposite a media center laden with a streamlined monitor. A slim system unit sits beneath. The sun is shining through a crack in the curtains, and Steve can see smudged fingerprints along the edge of the screen.

"Ooh, a smart-ass. Stick with me, buddy; Auntie Natasha has your back."

Steve restrains his inappropriate reply and merely says, "Thanks. Your name's Natasha?"

"Yep." The voice sounds excessively cheerful. "Welcome to your new home."

Steve looks around the room. A galley kitchen filled with out-of-date appliances to the right; an old-fashioned aluminum diner table sits shoved up against the wall. To the left, the windows: floor-to ceiling, covered by heavy drapes. Steve twists around. Behind, a ladder going up to a loft. The room is tiny, belied by its high ceiling.

Natasha speaks again. Her voice is scattered around the room; Steve finds three speaker banks that he can see, and hears two more that he can't. "James, you gonna come down here and join us?"

James. The name sparks a recognition algorithm in Steve's processor. _Uh, Bucky. I mean James! James Buchanan Barnes. Fuck._ His user. Steve cranes his neck upward. He can make out the edge of a desk, and the corner of a bedsheet poking over the side of the loft, covered in red polka-dots.

A new voice: "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming, keep your skirt on."

The voice—Averaging 140 Hertz, masculine, curious harmonics—sounds irritated. Steve catalogues everything he can. Half a hundred subroutines flutter in the back of his mind, so many he can practically feel the ones and zeros flipping. He feels... jittery.

"Only if you will," Natasha says. She sounds sly.

The floorboards of the loft creak—it's an improvised, post-construction addition, compared to the quality of the window frames—and a man slips into view. His hair hangs dark and long over his shoulders, obscuring his face as he climbs forward down the ladder. He's wearing a white t-shirt and dark blue pajama pants. One of his arms is metal, a low-budget prosthesis lacking even the most basic synthskin. He is approximately 5'11". His heart-rate is 120bpm. He is—Steve cuts himself off and stands, turning to face his user.

James Buchanan Barnes has ghost-pale skin, and his lips are chewed red. Steve steps around the couch and holds out a hand. "I'm Steve," he says. "I guess Steve Barnes, since you're my user."

Bucky stares at his hand for a moment, glancing uncertainly between it and Steve's face before reaching out to shake it. "Bucky," he says. His voice is quieter, now. More uncertain.

"He's pretty, James. Can we keep him?"

Bucky scowls, his cheeks pinking. "That's Natasha. My home computer."

"We met."

"Right, yeah." Bucky flushes darker. He stares at the floor.

Steve resists the urge to cross his arms over his chest. _Maintain a welcoming posture to put your user at ease._

"She's a pain in the ass," Bucky says in a rush.

"Don't listen to him," Natasha says smoothly, cutting through the discomfort as though it isn't there at all. "He's just jealous of our soul connection."

Steve snorts. Bucky watches him, his surprise narrowing into curiosity. "You're really human-like," he says, then winces.

Steve reaches up to run his fingers through his bangs. It's the first time he's ever done it; his muscles and joints pop, but his personality algorithms assure him it's a regular gesture. "Well, they say Stark 'bots are second to none."

"Aw, James, he's adorable. Look at how awkward and dorky he is."

"You don't need to sell me my own android, Nat."

Steve knows better, but the words come out anyway. "Yeah, Stark already did that."

Bucky's eyes widen.

Steve backpedals. "Uh—"

"Point to the dorklet," Natasha says. "Zip to James. Better pick it up, Barnes. You're losing."

"Sorry," Steve offers. His code is a knot of anxiety in his chest. "I didn't mean—"

"No, it's alright," Bucky says quickly. "I just—I wasn't expecting it." He starts to smile. It's shaky. "You're a lot snarkier than I thought you'd be."

"I—I can change it."

"No," Bucky says. "No. You picked it. You get to keep it. I don't mind, I promise."

 _ **I** picked it?_ Steve wants nothing more in that moment than to hack his source code. Instead, "What do we do now?"

Bucky opens his mouth, but nothing comes out; he looks overwhelmed. He glances over Steve's shoulder. Steve turns; a face has appeared on the monitor, a pale, hazel-eyed face with improbably red hair. "Go ahead and tap out," Natasha says, and the face speaks with her. "I'll take it from here."

Bucky nods and flees up the ladder, to the safety of the loft. Steve watches in shock. He turns to the monitor. "What just happened?"

"We're talking about you as though you can't hear us," Natasha calls out.

"So long as it's not about the thing with the whipped cream and the nipple clamps," Bucky answers. His voice is strained.

"He's got some problems with anxiety," Natasha says to Steve, cutting back on all but the monitor speakers. Her voice, which once flooded the apartment, is now far more intimate. "Too much stimulation gets stressful."

"He's a veteran, right?"

"Yeah, you remember?"

"Not really. It's relevant information in a couple files, though."

"Well, he is. One tour in Eastern Europe, two more in Mongolia and China. Lost his arm when an IEB went after his squad. It's hard for him to trust humans, anymore."

"'Cause a 'bot killed his squad?"

"'Cause he survived and the 'bot's handlers found him."

Steve sits down on the couch. He hadn't had any hopes or preconceptions about his user, for the simple reason that he hadn't existed until ten minutes ago. It's still a shock to hear. He scrolls through the newsfeeds of several high-profile sites. "So we're at war?"

Natasha manages to shrug, despite being a disembodied face. "That's what they tell us."

Steve's quiet for a time, filtering through reams of information to try and get a picture of the world he's found himself in. He fumbles, overwhelmed.

"You doing okay, there, buddy?" Natasha asks.

"Yeah," Steve says, dazed. "Just need to organize my files."

Natasha's face is understanding. "It's a lot to take in. Take a nap and sort it out, okay? We've got plenty of time to catch you up later."

"Okay." Steve does as she says and clicks off his photoreceptors. His hibernation subroutines are already kicking in, moving information from file to file for easier, more streamlined access. He could run an override and stay awake to watch, but he's tired. He lets himself switch off.

======  
===

_No one suspected that this quiet young boy from Augsberg would become the father of AI. A self-effacing, humble individual by all reports, it was nevertheless his research into computational heuristics that led Abraham Erskine to produce the first known example of artificial intelligence, and to usher in the era we now call the Singularity._

_The timing could not have been better. The global economy was in the middle of an unprecedented upswing, fat off the prosperity that bloomed in the wake of the Afghani-Iraq Wars and the economic recession, and early forays into interstellar mining made the minerals essential for the formation of android bodies and minds accessible in unprecedented volume._

_Funded by the United States government and working out of a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Erskine, in conjunction with his then-best friend and partner, Dr. Johann Schmidt, developed the mind they came to call Adam. Adam was, of course, a prototype in an entirely new field of programming, and thus not as sophisticated as the intelligences we interact with today; at the time of his creation, however, he was, to use the parlance of the day, singular._

_Since then, the field of robotics and AI has made ever greater strides, impacting our daily lives in ways we are still coming to understand. Thanks to Abraham Erskine, we now find 'bots in all sectors, working as quietly and humbly as their creator._

—Waters, Catherine. _Great Inventors Throughout History._ Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2048.

======  
===

Clickclickclick— _whoomp_ —click.

Clickclickclick— _whoomp_ —click.

Clickclickclick—

"James, your new 'bot is molesting the stove."

Steve spins around, knocking his knee into one of the propane cylinders. "I'm not molesting it!"

Natasha's face pings up on the monitor over the sink. "Yeah? Then why are you getting all up close and personal with it?"

He can feel the vasodilation that floods his facial dermis with dye. He's blushing, he realizes. He ducks his head. "Never seen fire in person, before."

"Awww," Natasha coos, and Steve finds himself glaring at her. He wonders when he'll stop being surprised by his own behavior patterns.

Natasha doesn't pay him any mind. "You're like a baby," she says. "Look at you, touching hot stoves. Does this mean you're gonna suck your thumb when you don't get your way?"

"I'm not a baby!"

"Pff. You had to shut down because the headlines sent you into overdrive. You're a bitty little baby 'bot."

"I'm not a—"

Bucky's voice filters down through the ceiling. "Nat, leave him alone." Steve jumps, and Natasha smirks.

"Yes, Dad," she tosses out before vanishing from the screen.

Bucky doesn't say anything else. Steve hesitates, staring up at the un-sanded two-by-fours that make underside of the loft, before moving over to the pantry. He's curious. He can't help it. He wants to know, and there's so much to catch up on. He's got to start somewhere.

Also, he wants to know more about his user. And if Bucky isn't comfortable being around him, yet, Steve will make do with what he has.

Natasha's voice pops up from the speaker mounted over the front door. "You want my opinion?" she says, and her voice is thoughtful. "Avoid the Internet, for now. Your processors are forming up millions of new connections each minute, you don't need the strain of all that excess information clogging your pathways."

Steve thinks back to his mishap with the newsfeeds. He nods. "Sounds good."

"Of course it sounds good, it was my idea."

"Sure." Steve opens the pantry door. His brows raise. "Does he really eat all of this?"

"That's about a month's supply, so yeah."

"But..." Steve pulls out a box of something called Lucky Charms. "But there's so much. How does he keep track of when to eat what?"

Natasha titters; the floorboards creak, and Steve is blushing again. He puts the box back as though it burned him.

"Fleshy people don't run off arc power like you and me," Natasha says. "They have to refuel more often."

"I know that," Steve mutters. If this is embarrassment, he doesn't think he likes it. He turns back to the pantry.

"And when they do refuel, they do it with variety. You have, what, three or four different recommended grades of transmission fluid? James, he has thousands. And he can't eat too much of one kind, or he'll get a nutritional imbalance. A lot of what motivates a human is food: what kind, how much, when to eat it, where it came from. James isn't so bad, he'll eat pretty much anything, but Yelena down the hall tells me her user is the pickiest bitch ever to turn her nose up at a tomato."

"Hey," Steve says mildly, sniffing a jar of peanut butter. "That's not nice."

"Yelena's words, not mine."

"Still no need to be mean."

The sink monitor flares to life again. Natasha cocks her head. "What if I really, really hate them? What if they spammed my inbox with, like, sixty billion phishing scams?"

"Then I'd say you need a better filter." Steve pokes through Bucky's canned goods. "But you could probably call them a bitch, then. I wouldn't fight you."

He hears a muffled laugh from the loft. Steve starts. A warm feeling spreads through his circuits, and his busses are humming—the only way he can describe it is contentedly. He glances to Natasha. She rolls her eyes. "Ugh, you two are losers. Go talk to him, already."

Steve bites his lip. "Is he...?"

Natasha rolls her eyes heavenward. "Lord, give me strength." She hollers through the apartment. "James, your boy toy wants to see you. Can you handle it without spazzing out on him?"

" _Fuck_ you, Nat."

Natasha grins at Steve. "See? He's dandy."

Feeling vaguely like he awoke in the midst of a madhouse, Steve shuts the pantry and walks over to the ladder. Evening has fallen, and the only light on is the one Bucky's got up in his loft. Steve peers through the shadows, but the angle's too steep for him to see anything.

"Bucky, I'm coming up," he says.

"Third step's shaky," is all Bucky says in reply.

Steve makes his way up, and gradually the lay of the loft comes clear to him. It's bare, much as the floor below; there's a desk against the wall, no higher than his knee, and it's absolutely covered with every kind of computer monitor that Steve could imagine. More hang on the walls, and a bank of servers blink softly in the corner. The only other bit of furnishing is the mattress, laid out flat on the floor. Bucky is there, sitting with his arms tucked about his knees. He's biting his lip, and he can't quite meet Steve's gaze.

Steve ducks to keep from hitting his head on the low ceiling. "Hey, Bucky."

There's a line of tension across Bucky's shoulders that has Steve clenching up his own in sympathy. "Hi, Steve. Welcome to the attic."

Steve settles down into a squat, right there by the ladder. "Seems cozy enough."

Bucky gives a one-armed shrug. "It's warm in the winter."

"So, uh. You work from here?" Steve nods at the thicket of computer parts.

"Yeah. I do some programming. Databases, web design, whatever people are willing to pay for. Kind of a jack-of-all-trades."

"Huh. And the, uh." He points to the servers.

Bucky rubs the back of his neck. "Need a lot of space, sometimes. Run simulations, or to store large pieces of code. It made sense to invest in, after a while." He lets up a grin. "I made Nat on that server."

"He's very proud," Natasha says, popping up on one of the monitors.

Bucky gives a wry half-grin. "Yeah, she's got a lot of custom code I put in. Based her off the standard model, but I didn't like the specs, so I tinkered."

"He named me after his drill sergeant," she says conspiratorially to Steve. "He says it's because she was the scariest motherfucker he ever met, but I think it's because he's the subbiest sub to ever sub subbi—"

"Nat, shut the fuck up!"

She vanishes with an indignant huff. Bucky, meanwhile, is redder than the dots on his sheets. "I didn't name her after my drill sergeant," he says. He scrubs a hand through his hair. "Don't think I really knew what I was getting into, when I coded her."

"You love me, Barnes."

"Only on Saturdays, Nat, and that's because it's in the contract."

Steve watches the by-play, and something in his code gives a plaintive little output. Steve ducks his head. He wouldn't mind being as comfortable with a person as these two seemed to be. He glances up at Bucky.

"So she's like your daughter, then?"

Bucky pulls a face, and Natasha blows an electronic raspberry. "Hell no," Bucky says. "More like my annoying little sister. Who's dirty diaper I had to change when her programming went splat."

He's more at ease, now, Steve decides. He shifts until he's sitting cross-legged, mimicking Bucky's more relaxed posture. "What am I, then?"

Bucky is suddenly very interested in the joints in his metal arm. "Friend, I guess."

Steve perks up at that. "Friend. I can do that." He scours his database, searching for clues. He finds a dozen definitions, but not one hint on how to be a friend. He remembers Natasha's warning, and keeps away from the Internet. He can feel himself blushing, again. He picks at the floorboards. "What, um. What do friends do?"

Bucky looks at him as though he's asked about the meaning of life. He starts laughing, but the harmonics are off; it's discordant, ugly. "Buddy," he says, "if I knew the answer to that do you think I'd've bought a 'bot?"

The words strike Steve like a blow. An awkward silence falls. He doesn't know why the muscles in his chest are pulling tight; all he knows is that it hurts, and it's seventeen percent harder to breathe, and it was Bucky's words that did it.

"Shit," Bucky says. "Shit, Steve, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

"No?" Steve snaps. He's angry. He knows because that's the subroutine his emotions programming are playing, but he'll be damned if he knows why. "Then why'd you say it?"

Bucky's eyes are hollow and guilty. "Because it's true," he says. "I don't trust people. But 'bots? They're honest. They'll always do what their programming tells them to."

Steve's hurting less, now, in the face of Bucky's hurt. He's a comfort 'bot, and he was built to ease his user's pain. Whatever Bucky specified in licensing, that at least hasn't changed. He's still mad, though. "So I'm a cheap replacement. A puppet that'll do what you say."

Bucky shakes his head, "No, you got it all wrong," he says helplessly. Steve glares at him, and Bucky hunkers down into a tighter ball. The plates of his prosthesis recalibrate back and forth with muted whirrs. "You're not a replacement," he whispers to his knees. "You're—you're Steve." He keeps his eyes fixed on the floor between them. "I don't know who that is, yet, but you're someone, and I want to get to know you. That's—I don't feel that. For humans. Not anymore. You're the first in a long time." He swallows, and when he speaks again his voice is on the quieter reaches of Steve's auditory range. "You're not a puppet."

Someone's playing music in another apartment. Steve doesn't recognize it; something with piano. It's muted through the walls, falling soft in the air between them. "I think I should go back downstairs," he says. He's not angry anymore, but he doesn't understand the tangled mix of code juddering through his compiler any better. He stands, and Bucky flinches. Steve fights back the instinct to go to him, because other instincts tell him it's not time yet, that Bucky's body language is too tense for contact.

And besides, there's another part of Steve, a part he's pretty sure is an aftermarket install, that wants Bucky to stew in his own words.

He climbs down the ladder, mindful of the third step, and goes to sit at the kitchen table. Natasha's sink screen is directly across from his chair, he realizes. She doesn't materialize, so Steve does the only thing he knows how to do when he's hurting and confused: he powers down.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky doesn't leave the loft for the rest of the week. Steve hears Natasha talking with him in a hushed voice, and Bucky's replies are by turns terse and faltering. Steve overrides his auditory language centers so he can't understand them. He has a feeling they're meant to be private.

He stays on the lower floor, exploring the house. He lifts the couch, to see what's underneath; he finds dustbunnies, loose change, and a single bent spring poking out the bottom. He goes through Bucky's kitchen drawers twice, and memorizes all the food he owns. He flushes the toilet just to watch the water spin down the drain, and he knows he's wasting water, but he can't help but flush it four more times for the fun of it. He opens the closet; it smells like Bucky inside: masculine, full of wool, cotton, and leather, and a faint, faded wisp of cologne. Steve can't smell it anywhere in the apartment, and there's no corresponding bottle in the medicine cabinet. Was it Bucky's, he wonders, or someone else's?

Occasionally, Natasha will send a text banner across one of the screens asking him to put a glass of water or a bowl of cereal on the top step, and Steve will do it, carefully, so as not to see or be seen.

Bucky waits until Steve is distracted before he fetches the offerings. He sounds furtive, to Steve's ear, like he's intruding in his own home.

It leaves Steve feeling hollow. He almost runs a diagnostic to root out the structural fault that's making his chest ache, until he realizes it's just his emotions processor. He folds himself up as tightly as he can and watches the sun set through the cracks in the curtains.

Another day passes. Bucky clatters around upstairs. Natasha is largely absorbed with helping him, and Steve is left at loose ends. He's plowing through Bucky's Amazon cloud at an alarming rate, just to keep the restlessness from fraying his neural circuits. He has a dozen questions, and the urge to demand answers is getting overwhelming--but he makes himself wait until Bucky turns out the lights for the night before he flicks on the nearest keyboard and loads Natasha's command line shell. _Is this normal for him?_

 _Only on days ending in Y,_ is her mystifying reply.

_?_

_It's more unusual to see a good day, where he doesn't have a panic attack or crippling social anxiety._

Steve's anger, whatever scraps of it are left, evaporate in the face of those words. _It's worse when he's with humans, isn't it._

 _He doesn't leave the apartment more than once a week,_ Natasha replies. _For physical therapy. That's it. He gets his groceries delivered, and I give him the all-clear to open the door._

Steve stares at the screen. It feels like his diaphragm has been paralyzed. _Is he ever coming down?_

Natasha's face appears, silent and set. She stares at Steve, and text rolls across the bottom of the screen. _If you press him, it will set back months of progress. And if I have to see him turn back into the catatonic mess he was, I will hack your code and shred you. Do you understand?_

Steve sets his jaw. _Yes._

Natasha disappears, and the shell force quits. Steve stares at the blank monitor. He glances up to the loft, but all he can see is cheap wood composite and the glow of power lights reflected off the ceiling. He picks at the corner of the couch and tries to imagine what it would be like, not to be able to face the world. He gives it up for useless a minute in. He has no frame of reference for the wider world, with people other than Bucky and Natasha. He hasn't even drawn back the curtains over the windows.

He passes the time re-cataloguing the minute details of the apartment and studying his accessible code. He's a blusher, but he already knew that, and his sense of humor turns toward the self-referential. He's glad; if it turned outward it would catch on Bucky, and Steve... He's just glad.

He stares at himself in the mirror over the bathroom sink. He's blond-haired and pale, and his eyes are a perfect 255 blue. He prods at his cheeks to see the dye fill in with simulated pressure response. He could grow a beard, if he wants; he decides against it, until he hears what Bucky has to say.

There's a mirror on the back of the door. He takes off his Stark Industries scrubs and examines himself full-length in the glass. He is small and lithe, the lines of his muscle sleek across his arms and torso. There is no hair on his chest, but a trail of fuzz begins beneath his belly button and thickens to circle the base of his flaccid penis. There's more hair beneath his armpits, downy tufts brushed on like an afterthought, and his legs are dusted with gold. He marvels at the engineers who designed him. His dermis is perforated with hundreds of millions of hair follicles, all of them live, all of them wired into his CPU. His fingernails will grow, if he decides to dedicate the resources; his skin will darken in response to prolonged sunlight. He inhales, and he feels the air sucked down through the motherboard in his chest to cool it. He exhales, and his breath is warm from his body, as a human's is.

He is startled from his perusal when the bathroom door opens. He stands there, caught out naked in his user's bathroom, and Bucky stares at him in shock for a full heartbeat, his hand still on the doorknob.

Then the moment breaks. Bucky goes so red it looks painful, and he's gone so fast Steve has plenty of time to curse the hesitation protocol that holds him back from catching him. "Bucky, wait!" He pulls on his clothes and he's out the door, climbing the ladder. He doesn't think—a curious sensation for a five thousand-core, septuple processor, because he _can_ think, but a subroutine blocks it from happening—until he's in the loft, invading Bucky's safe place and staring him down. He wilts into himself. "Don't leave," he says, feeling foolish.

Bucky is burrowed into the covers, his laptop open against his raised knees. He won't meet Steve's gaze. He's trembling, Steve sees it in the white-knuckle grip of his fingers against the computer's case, and Steve can feel himself getting mad again, because no one should feel like this, especially not in front of their 'bot.

He pads over, slowly and in plain view, and settles down on the nearest edge of Bucky's mattress. "You wanna talk about it?"

"No." Bucky's voice is strained. Steve glances to him. His blush has vanished into a sick-looking pallor.

"I think we should," Steve says. "'Cause I'm not really sure what happened."

Bucky looks frozen to the spot. His eyes aren't reading the screen in front of him so much as staring through it, but he doesn't look checked-out, yet. Steve presses on.

"I was looking at myself in the mirror. Never seen myself before, you know? I didn't mean to get in the way."

"You weren't in the way," Bucky says, sounding as though the words popped out without his permission.

"I think I was," Steve replies slowly. "You've been avoiding me, I get that. I wasn't exactly nice, last time we talked. And I'd rather you be comfortable than social."

He hears the click as Bucky swallows. "You're more human than I thought you would be."

Steve sits on that for a while. He's got his arms around his knees, and he stares at his fingers while he parses out all of Bucky's potential meaning. He really, really doesn't want to screw this up.

"I'm less human the closer you get," he says.

Bucky looks up at him. His eyes are red-rimmed.

Steve holds out his hand, palm up. "Take my pulse." His logic unit's going nuts, firing loops haywire through his busses. Steve has a dozen and one ways to mask his pseudo-humanity, and not one to show it. He's running on pure projection.

Bucky stares at it for a while before reaching out and brushing his fingertips against Steve's skin. Waves of simulated goosebumps flare out at the touch. Steve blinks at the peculiarity of it, and he checks his code: _if touch (admin) = firstTime / then run file (pilomotorReflex);_

He glances back to Bucky, who's intent on his wrist. He's digging his fingers into Steve's skin, a crease forming between his eyebrows. "I can't find one," he finally says, letting go.

"Don't have one," Steve replies. "I don't have a heart."

Bucky's still wary, but the stress in his shoulders has eased. "Arc reactor, right?"

"That's right," Steve says, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "I'm the very best StarkTech can offer, the acme of robotics. I'll never run dry, so long as we keep track of the software updates."

Bucky snorts. "You sound like an ad."

"Every 'bot is an ad," Steve says, laying the affront on thick. "We're here to make the investors happy, after all."

Bucky's smile is brittle. "Jesus fucking Christ," he says. "Didn't know I was getting a comedian."

"Well, you know.” Steve shrugs. “Professionalism chips cost extra."

Bucky barks a laugh. It cuts off sharply, as though he surprised himself. That nasty, hollow feeling is back again, and Steve hates that Bucky has forgotten what it feels like to laugh. Steve's never done it himself, but he knows what the subroutine does, and he looks forward to feeling it. His heart breaks for his user.

"I run a little cooler than a human, too," he says. "And I think my eyes are different." He clears his throat. "So if I ever get a little too, um. Human."

"I'll keep it in mind," Bucky says. He lets his knees drop to cross in front of him, and the computer is just a computer again, not a barrier between him and the world. He glances to Steve. "I've got some code I need to punch out," he says. "But you can stick around, if you want."

Happiness blooms in Steve’s chest. "I'd like that," he says.

Bucky offers a tentative smile, but his face falls moments later. "Just..." he squirms a bit, glancing between Steve and the ladder. "Before we do, I really have to take a piss."

======  
===

His "naps" are getting quicker, Steve realizes. The paucity of new experiences in Bucky's apartment, now that most of the available data has been absorbed, shows itself in less need to for him to spend time defragging. He overrides the shut-down sequence and watches while his files collate and zip together, packing down into his databases for easy future access. It's surprisingly peaceful: the flow of data winks in and out like fireflies, lighting up his busses in the dark. The gentle back-and-forth waves of binary through his hard drive are hypnotizing. He finds his higher brain functions powering down despite himself, and he drifts in the flickering shadows of sleep.

He is woken by strident ringing, and Bucky swearing a blue streak in the loft. There's a muted click. "Barnes," he says. "Oh, hey, Becca." A wary tone filters through the harmonics in his voice.

 _SHIT,_ Natasha scrawls across the living room monitor. _BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES._

 _?_ Steve asks with the keyboard.

 _His sister,_ Natasha replies. _This could get ugly._

Steve sits up from where he was slumped on the couch. _Should I go up?_

 _Definitely not,_ Natasha says. _Odds are good it's about you. You'd only make it worse._

Steve frowns, and almost taps in another question, when the conversation filters down. He looks up to the loft. He can just make out the top of Bucky's head.

"C'mon, Becca—yes, I know what I'm doing! I'm a fucking programmer, of course I know what I'm doing. I'm not hiding—you know what? You know what, Becca? Screw you. It's my money. _Mine._ So what if it was Gran's first! She gave it to me, didn't she? And you didn't bitch about it when I bought my servers—he's not a fucking _sex toy,_ what the fuck is wrong with you!"

Steve jerks around to face the monitor. Natasha's face is up, and she winces. Fight-or-flight subroutines auto-load, and Steve’s reactor cycles up to deal with the increasing energy demands. His CPU is processing information at a ridiculous speed; his save rate doubles to compensate.

Bucky starts pacing, his footsteps creaking over the floorboards. "His name is Steve, okay? Yeah, I named him, I wasn't just gonna call him ''bot' or 'hey you.' That's the point of a companion 'bot, Becca! You're _supposed_ to get attached! What, you think it's better that I just stay in my apartment the rest of my life? No, you think? You think I haven't figured that out, already? I know I'm fucked up, Becca, okay? Trust me, I _know_."

Bucky's voice is crisp in Steve's ears. He can feel his chest getting warm. His breathing accelerates to keep his motherboard from overheating.

"Stop calling him 'it', Becca, I swear to fucking God—he's not a thing, don't you dare call him that, don't you _dare_ —yeah? Yeah? You wanna go there with me? He's more real than you are, Sis. What are you, you're a voice at the end of a phone line!"

Steve keeps reservoirs of saline behind his eyes, to hydrate his lenses and simulate tears. They’re spasming, now, and it burns. He ducks his head. All of a sudden Bucky stops dead. "Fuck you, Rebecca," he finally says, his voice cracking. "Go to Hell."

Steve hears the beep of an ended call, a sharp hiss, and then a sudden burst of movement followed by a crack as the phone hits the wall. Steve stares at his knees and listens to Bucky struggle through a breathing exercise.

A soft strobe of light catches his attention. Steve looks up. Natasha's on the monitor, her eyes sad. _Go up to him,_ she writes.

 _Not sure that's a good idea,_ Steve types out, a bitter taste like solder rising in the back of his throat.

 _I caught some of what she said,_ Natasha replies. _You really need to go up there, now._

Steve nods, reasserts conscious control over his tear ducts, and stands. He walks around the side of the couch to the ladder. "I'm coming up, okay, Bucky?"

"Fuck off," is all he gets in reply.

Steve swallows. He glances to Natasha; she nods encouragingly. "Sorry, Buck, not gonna happen." He makes his way up the creaking ladder to the loft. Bucky's sitting on the edge of his bed, a shadow against his ridiculous polka-dot sheets. He's got his head in his hands, his hair curtaining about his face, and he looks so precisely the picture of despair that Steve has to force his calming subroutine through the compiler. Steve steps over and kneels next to him. "Hey," he says.

Bucky doesn't look at him. "I'm not a pervert," he says quietly.

All the breath leaves him in a rush. "She said that?"

Bucky scrubs his fingers through his hair, tugging on the strands as he stares down at the floor. "She's not the only one." Steve can see the edge of a bitter smile cut across his face. "It's not right, liking 'bots more than people."

Steve swallows again, and comes to a decision. "Can I touch you?" he asks.

Bucky shrugs as though he doesn't care one way or the other, but Steve can see the subtle tightening in the muscles under his t-shirt. The plates of his near arm jostle with the change in tension.

Steve touches him anyway, running his hand over his back. He feels warm to the touch, fragile despite the power coiled in his body. Goosebumps rise along Bucky's flesh arm, and Steve understands, now, why his code read the way it did. _Humans are social creatures. They require regular, positive touch to function at peak levels_.

How long has it been since anyone touched James Buchanan Barnes? Since he let anyone touch him? Steve settles himself closer, and Bucky slips sideways into his chest. It's only been a week since Steve woke up in Bucky's apartment, but never has he been so glad for it until now, when Bucky is shuddering against him with suppressed emotion. This is something he can help.

"Let it out," he says, laying them both out across the bed. Bucky clings to him, and Steve wraps his arms around his shoulders. He brushes his fingers through his hair and down his back.

Bucky doesn't loosen his grip on his control, but the wet warmth of tears spreads across Steve’s shirt, and Bucky's body trembles as he fights against sobbing. Steve tucks him under his chin and lets him hold tight until the emotion is spent. Bucky sighs long and slow, his body relaxing.

"You're humming," he says dully. He presses his hand against Steve's stomach, above the arc reactor.

"Told you I don't have a heartbeat," Steve murmurs in reply. "That's the closest thing I have to it."

"'Arc-powered, seventh generation StarkTech chassis,'" Bucky says. "Top-of-the-line."

 _Top of the standard commercial line three years ago,_ Steve thinks, but he doesn't say it out loud. Not everyone can afford a Mark X, and he doesn't want to offend.

He doesn't mind, not really. What does it matter, in the long-run, if he's not the finest hardware technology has to offer? Technology marches on, and sooner or later the finest hardware would be as dated and obsolete as any other body he could wear. He traces the curve of Bucky's ear with a finger. "Let's get you in bed," he says.

"Already in bed," Bucky mumbles.

"More in bed, then." Steve nudges his arms away, but Bucky clings tighter, his breath catching, and he buries his face in Steve's chest. Steve doesn't push. He thinks for a minute, then pulls the blankets down over the both of them, and wraps himself back around Bucky's body. "This works, too."

Minutes later and Bucky's asleep, wrapped in blankets and Steve, and Steve sinks back into himself to watch the impulses firing through his busses.

======  
===

_Despite the incontrovertible evidence given by Peter Parker's Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs of Chinese prisoners in American camps, the State Department has yet to make a firm statement regarding the allegations of human rights violations. Sources say that the prisoners are neither clothed nor fed suitable to the harsh climate, and are only given enough water to survive. Yet by all accounts, conditions are worse in China, where water rationing is far more aggressive. No conclusive evidence has been provided at this time, but it is generally assumed among Coalition forces that Chinese camps are so severe that incoming prisoners are advised to kill themselves to save themselves the misery._

_Never since the Second World War has the death toll in combat been so dramatic, or as starkly illustrated as it is in Parker's photographs. Returning soldiers bear stories of bullets falling so thickly in firefights that one described it like being trapped in a bag of popcorn while being microwaved._

_Far worse than the spread of bullets, however, is the prolonged psychological wear upon the troops. Despite the gradual replacement of human military personnel with android units on the battlefield, the demands of leadership are no easier for the remaining humans; and with precision airstrikes growing more precise every day, many describe a morbid fear of stepping outside lest they be gunned down by a passing drone._

_A less well-respected field is also cropping up: that of the psychological treatment of android soldiers. Many call it a waste of time, saying it is easier simply to dismantle the damaged units and recycle their parts. Other groups, many of which are, perhaps unsurprisingly, from the military, decry this as inhumane and unnecessary. "They fought, same as we did," a 'bot sergeant who wished to remain unidentified said. "They deserve as much consideration as that. Wiping 'em won't do us any good in the long run."_

—Buchman, Sue. "Commentators Call War in Northern China WWIII." _New York Times._ 5 February 2053: A1. Print.

======  
===

Bucky is a restless sleeper. Steve lies on the edge of the mattress, the trailing edge of the sheet draped over his hip, and watches as Bucky fidgets and mumbles in his sleep. The soft green glow from the power lights on the server bank illuminate the circles under his deep-set eyes, and Steve thinks perhaps he hasn't had decent sleep in far too long. He watches him slip from N3 into REM.

Almost immediately a line forms between Bucky's brows, and his muscles tense. Steve rocks up onto an elbow. Bucky's heart rate and breathing pick up, and Steve freezes when a whimper forces its way past his clenched teeth.

"Bucky?" he says, but Bucky doesn't wake up. Steve scooches himself closer. "Bucky, are you alright?"

"Please stop," Bucky says in a broken whisper. Steve freezes.

"Stop what?" he asks.

Bucky doesn't say anything, just whimpers again.

A shiver works its way down Steve’s spine. Threat analyses run in the back of his mind, tangling with his health diagnostics, but there aren't any threats. It's just them in the apartment, and Natasha on the servers. But Bucky's heart is beating abnormally fast, and he's started sweating.

"Bucky, I think you should wake up," Steve says. He reaches out a hand—

"Oh God, please stop!" Bucky's voice is high-pitched and agonized, and the hairs on the back of Steve's neck stand straight up. "I don't know anything, please—"

"Bucky, wake up!" Steve reaches out to touch Bucky's shoulder. He shakes him; nothing happens. Bucky's crying, his tears glistening in the eerie light of the servers.

"Bucky, c'mon!" Steve shakes him harder, and in an explosion of movement he finds himself on the floor, curling around the spasm in his solar plexus. He blinks slowly at the floorboards.

"Steve?"

He tries to speak, but he can't trigger his lungs. He runs a self-diagnostic; the answer isn't encouraging. _Strong blows to the solar plexus often temporarily paralyze a human's diaphragm_. He scrabbles against the floor, running command overrides a dozen at a time, and reflects that verisimilitude isn't always all that it's cracked up to be.

"Shit! Steve, are you alright?"

Steve forces out a whimper, but that just makes his problem worse. He gasps for air, and his save rate flickers like a butterfly caught in his chest.

He doesn't need air to survive, is the thing. He can go without breathing as long as necessary until his CPU starts to overheat, and even then it shouldn't induce panic like this.

Clammy hands lift him upright and bend him to lean over his knees. "Steve, you gotta relax," Bucky says, his face sheet-white.

 _It's not a thing I can relax,_ Steve wants to say. _It's asinine programming._ But he can't, so he holds on to Bucky's hands and does his best to do as he says. He concentrates on lowering his save rate; he's not going to die, it's unnecessary to keep as much data as possible. He takes advantage of the freed-up busses to send a strongly-worded force-quit to his Instinctual Behaviors program files, and all at once the lock on his diaphragm lets loose. He sucks in a heaving gasp of air.

"That is the stupidest piece of code I have ever seen," he wheezes, sagging into himself in exhaustion. "Why the hell would they want a 'bot to mimic that?"

Bucky's still kneeling before him, thin-lipped and tear-stained, and Steve can see large patches of sweat soaking his t-shirt. He squeezes his hand. "Are you alright?" he asks.

"Am _I_ alright?" Bucky says. "Shit, Steve. I punched you right out of the bed and you ask if _I'm_ alright." He's shaking, and his eyes are large like a child's.

"Yeah," Steve says. "No harm done, though. See?" He lifts his shirt to bare his belly and does a double-take at the dark smudge marring his skin. "Or... maybe yes, actually." He prods it with a finger and winces. "That's definitely a bruise." He checks his chassis function, and stares into the distance for a moment while he follows the migration of millions of nannites as they cluster around the microdamaged tissue to heal it. "Huh."

A choked-out noise brings him back to the present. Bucky is huddled in front of him, his forehead on his knees and his hands tight about his ankles. "God, Steve," he says. "I'm s-sorry, I—"

"No, hey," Steve says, letting his shirt drop and reaching up to cradle Bucky's head. "It's okay. Just discoloration from the nannite cloud patching me back up. Nothing to worry about, Buck."

"I hurt you," Bucky says, his voice thick with self-recrimination. "I'm fucking useless, all I do is hurt everyone around me—"

"Nah, that was on me," Steve says. "That was a nightmare you were having, right?"

Bucky shudders. "Yeah."

"I should have known better than to try and shake you awake." He moves around behind Bucky and wraps himself around his back. He tucks his chin over Bucky's shoulder. "It was a dumbshit move on my part, and I apologize."

"No," Bucky says, plainly horrified. "No, Steve, it wasn't you, I hit you, okay? Don't put this on yourself. Put the blame where it belongs, okay?"

"Not seeing any blame," Steve replies. "Just an accident."

Bucky's breath shudders out of him, and Steve feels a hot splatter against his forearm. Tears. Bucky's crying, again. "Shh," he says. "None of that. Nothing happened, we're all good. You're fine, I'm fine. We're all good." He rocks Bucky gently because that's what his programming tells him to do, and because it seems like a good enough idea. Bucky relaxes eventually, his head flopping back against Steve's shoulder.

"I lost my unit," he eventually says. "Was stationed in the 107th Infantry as a squad sergeant, kept watch over six 'bots. They weren't like you," he says. "Not coded to look or act human. Lot of the other 'bot sergeants didn't like 'em very much, said they were creepy. I didn't get it. They were just 'bots, you know? But the other sergeants, they kept with humans. Let the 'bots stay in the hangars."

He clears his throat. "Every now and then, whenever the bug bit, I guess, they'd all pool their money and rent a sexbot for a day or two and pass her around, tweaking the settings before they used her. One guy, Rumlow, he liked it when she screamed. They offered me a round, but I, uh. I said no. Kept with my squad. They called me 'bot-lover, after that." He sniffles.

"Anyway. My unit. We were right on the border of Mongolia when we got pinned down by sniper fire. Took cover in a bombed-out school, kept our heads low and called for support." He snorts. "Wasn't any to spare. They told us to get our own asses outta hock and get to the RV, 'cause they couldn't help us.

"I sent out Jib to try and draw fire while the rest of us got to better ground. He drew fire, alright. Ten feet from the door, they shot out his chest." He's trembling in earnest, now. Steve rubs his arms to try and get heat back into his body. "I couldn't send anyone else after that. We just sat there like bumps on a log. God, I can still see the red light blinking in Jib's eye. He was that close. It's like his body was accusing me." He hunches forward in a spasm of heartache, and Steve goes with him, cradling him through his pain.

"Oh God, Steve, they had us there for twelve hours. The 'bots were so scared, I had to be strong, you know? I was the human, I was the sergeant. I gave orders, I kept them safe. They still believed it too, even after they'd watched me send Jib out for target practice. Apparently the other side got sick of waiting after a while, though, 'cause they sent in a bomber to take care of us."

Steve sucks in a breath. Bucky nods. "Yeah, Natasha told you that part. She didn't tell you that the 'bot threw me out first, then exploded. I was squad sergeant, you know? I had all the intel. I was useful. Blew half my arm off, but who cares about that? I could still talk."

Bucky's silent for a moment. "I didn't say a damn thing to those fucking bastards," he says. "Not a goddamn thing." He turns and presses his face into Steve's shoulder. "They got me out three weeks later." He chokes out a strangled laugh. "Guess they really couldn't spare the manpower." Steve kisses Bucky's temple, for lack of any better ideas.

"They didn't have a 'bot do it. They probably didn't have the technical know-how; I mean, hijacking a nanny-bot to blow itself up? Not too hard to tweak that from its last-ditch, 'protect the baby' function. But torture is pretty specialized." He swallows. "God, I'm glad they didn't have a 'bot do it."

Steve's tear reservoirs are constricting, again. He forces them to loosen up. He runs a hand through Bucky's hair, massaging his scalp. "That's what you dreamed about?"

He nods against Steve's shoulder. "They really liked caning my feet."

Steve does a quick internet search and cringes at what he finds. He backtracks through the data he collated on Bucky, but he can't find any indication of a limp. Then again, the neural hook-ups in his arm are clearly the work of an expert neurologist; presumably Bucky had been able to pin down the services of an expert orthopedist, as well. He lets out a shaky breath. "I'm sorry," he says.

"Nothing you could've done to stop it."

Steve shifts his arms tighter around Bucky's waist and chest. "Doesn't mean I can't feel pain on your behalf."

Bucky shivers in his arms and holds on tight.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, Bucky goes to physical therapy. Steve watches quietly from the middle of the bed as he gets dressed.

"I'll be back in a couple hours," Bucky says. The circles under his eyes are shading to purple, and he's moving with all the vivacity of an eighty-year-old man. He looks toward the ladder. The lines on either side of his mouth draw in deep as he purses his lips.

"I'll be waiting," Steve says.

Bucky glances to him. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah." He looks a bit brighter at the prospect. He leaves with no more ceremony than that, pulling on his battered Dodgers hat, snagging his keys, and slipping down the ladder and out the door. The latch closes with a muted click. Silence descends.

"Well," Natasha says, manifesting on one of the desk monitors. "I say we get drunk and throw a rave."

"Sure," Steve says. "You're footing the bill."

She gives an evil laugh. "Come on, Pinocchio, we've got so far to catch up. Couch, now."

Steve does as she bids, sliding down the ladder and vaulting over the back of the couch. Natasha's face materializes on the living room monitor. "Movie-watching is a time-honored tradition," she says. "You've got to take this seriously, Steve, or we can't be friends. No parallel-processing, capisce?"

Steve rolls his eyes. "Just play the movie."

"'Just play the movie,' he says," Natasha mutters. "Like it's easy or something. What to watch, what to watch... Okay! We're going with Disney. Brace yourself."

She shows him _Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs_ first. Steve obligingly keeps from doing anything else on his other processors, though he's pretty sure he could have written an essay explaining all the ways the movie got the fairy tale wrong. _Pinocchio_ comes next. Steve rolls his eyes when he gets it.

"You're a jackass," he says.

Natasha just cackles.

Bucky comes back halfway through, smelling of cold air and sweat. "Do not ever call me 'fairy' again, Natasha," Steve calls out, "or I will find the line of code that specifies your hair length and shave you bald."

"Looks like Grumpy McLamepants woke up fresh as a daisy this morning," she shoots back.

Bucky huffs a laugh, and Steve grins over his shoulder. "Have a seat," he says. Bucky steps around the couch and sits himself down next to Steve. He's carrying himself as though he'll break apart if he's not careful.

On screen, Pinocchio's singing about strings and falling flat on his face; Steve turns to Bucky. "How was PT?"

"Oh, you know," he says, shrugging his good arm. "Vicious cruelty disguised as gentle encouragement."

He's carrying his arm more gingerly than usual. "You doing okay?"

Bucky flexes his metal fingers. Steve is entranced by their clean lines; the kerf-marks almost seem to highlight them, rather than detract. "It's almost fully integrated," Bucky says. "My therapist said my nerves are grafting onto the hook-ups perfectly."

Steve nods. "It looks like it's doing good. You have any phantom pain?"

"Nah. That stopped as soon as the hook-ups were wired in. Nowadays it's mostly just feedback. I tell him where and how much, and he tweaks the settings."

"Huh," Steve says. He reaches out and takes Bucky's hand, twining their fingers together. He looks up at Bucky. "This okay?"

Bucky's lips curl up in a crooked grin. "Yeah. It's good."

======  
===

Days pass, inch by molasses inch. Steve dips his toes further into the Internet under Natasha's careful guidance, and she leads him through the vagaries of how to share information without sharing communicable diseases, too. He adds HTML, txtspeak, sharespeak, and 1337 to his repertoire. He gets used to parallel processing on a macro scale.

He is learning, always learning.

And Bucky—he blossoms.

======  
===

It's mid-afternoon. Sunlight streams in between the curtains. Above, the sound of Bucky tapping at the keyboard fills the apartment with a soothing, irregular rhythm, like rain on a window. His music is loud enough for Steve to pick it up from his earbuds—until it cuts off. There's a moment of silence, then—

"It's quiet down there," Bucky calls down. "Too quiet."

"Hush," Natasha says.

Steve hears Bucky creaking around, and the click of his mouse, before he hears him climbing down to the main floor. "Whatcha guys doing?"

"Fine art," Natasha replies. "Go away."

"You go away," Bucky retorts. Steve feels him come up behind him and ruffle his hair. "That my tablet?"

"You weren't using it," Steve says, switching functions on the stylus so he can shade in the edges of the tutu. "Thought I'd look after it for you."

"Look after it, my ass," Bucky says, snatching it from his hands. "More like corrupt it for young mi—" He cuts himself off mid-sentence. Steve cranes back to look.

Bucky's staring at it, open-mouthed in shock. "Did you do this?" he finally asks.

"Yeah."

"It's... it's one of the hippos. From _Fantasia_."

"Yeah. Can I have it back? I wasn't done."

Bucky flips through earlier drawings and his surprise deepens. "Stevie, these are incredible."

Steve shrugs.

"Is this part of your programming?"

Steve rolls his shoulders. "Not really. I, uh. Picked it up this morning."

"He was bored and antsy, so I sat him down with a My Little Pony coloring book," Natasha said. "He kept coloring outside the lines—"

"Do you know how big that stylus is!" Steve snaps out. "It didn't _work_!"

"—so he decided to draw his own stuff."

Bucky looks down at the tablet almost desperately. "Please tell me you didn't draw like this right out of the gate."

Steve huffs and holds out his hand. Bucky gives it back, and Steve scrolls to the bottom of the recent documents list. "Here," he says. "It looks like a three-year-old did it."

"Oh my God it was so adorable watching him, too," Natasha bursts out, as though she's been keeping it in the whole time, just _waiting_ for the perfect opportunity to humiliate him—which, knowing Natasha, she probably had. "He kept swearing, James, I thought my ears were going to catch on fire."

"I swear," Steve mutters.

"Yeah, and it's like watching a five-year-old say 'fuck'." Bucky scrolls through Steve's ancient history. "Okay, I feel better about myself, now. I mean, you attained journeyman-level artistic talent in an afternoon, but at least you had to _practice_."

"Oh, for—really? Natasha's the one doodling fractals all over the place, and you're uptight about my hippos."

"Fractals are math," Bucky says, tilting his head as he looks at another drawing. "I'd be very worried if an AI couldn't doodle fractals."

Steve shoots a glance at the pristine, orange and fuchsia Mandelbrot set unfurling across the big screen. "Okay, yes, that's fair."

"That color combo should never have happened, though."

Natasha blows a raspberry at him. "And your mother thought you were straight."

"One shouldn't hold on to outdated stereotypes, Nat. It's harmful and inaccurate." Bucky hands the tablet back to Steve. Steve looks at it, at the half-shaded sketch of a hippo pirouetting across a soap bubble, and sets it down on the coffee table. He looks up at Bucky.

"How's the commission coming?"

Bucky groans theatrically. "It's sucking the joy out of life.” He flops down on the couch opposite Steve and tangles their legs together. "Ask not what your programmer can do for you, ask what you can goddamn do for your programmer."

"Picky, huh."

"To the nth power."

"They keep changing their minds," Natasha says. The Mandelbrot set takes on a bile-themed color palette, and Steve averts his eyes to keep from going blind. "'Could you put in a search box? But not there, because then it'll cover the logo. No, not at the bottom! No one will see it, then!'"

"You were listening in, weren't you," Bucky says.

"Yep."

"I hate that you can parallel process."

"Ah, the weaknesses of flesh."

"Hey," Steve says.

"You're not really flesh, baby 'bot. And you can parallel process with the best of them, so don't even play dumb with me."

"I know where you keep your code, Natasha."

"And I know you're watching cheesy 80s action movies without Bucky, so there."

"Hey!"

"Wait, what?" Bucky pushes himself up, and turns an absolutely horrible pair of sad puppy eyes Steve's way. "You're watching 80s schlock without me?"

"He's streaming them," Natasha says. "I think he just started _Robocop_."

"Natasha!"

"Not cool, man! Nat, turn it on! Where are you?"

Steve sighs, slumping down against the arm of the chair. "The car chase in the beginning. You know I'll just stream another one at the same time."

" _God_ , I hate 'bots, sometimes. Fine. You keep watching _Robocop_ without me, you Benedict Arnold."

Steve rolls his eyes. "Wouldn't have thought you'd want to see gory action movies anyway," he says. "Seriously, gory. And cheesy. Isn't it triggering?"

Bucky waves a hand. "Nah, it's completely bogus. Half the time they don't even hold the guns right. Sometimes if I'm just listening it'll get me, but gunfire was never really that bad for me, to be honest. I mean, I still like Independence Day fireworks."

"Mm." They're quiet for a time, watching Natasha butcher beautiful patterns with hideous colors, until Steve jerks. "Holy shit!"

Bucky's up and focused in a second flat. "What happened? What's wrong?"

"No," Steve says, red-faced. "They just shot his hand off."

Bucky stares at him for a moment, then starts to giggle. Steve glares. "Shut up," he says. 

It only makes it worse. Bucky's going pink, his face crinkled up in mirth, and Steve tries to keep a straight face, but the laughter's catching. He's already smiling, and then his emotions processor goes off and kicks him in the balls. He couldn't have stopped his embarrassed giggles for God himself.

They feed off each other until they're both doubled up on the couch, laughing so hard they can't breathe. "I d-don't know what I was expecting," Bucky says through the spasms. "Maybe you busted a chip?"

"Fuck you, I'm the acme of r-robotics," Steve gasps out, and that just sets them off again.

They end up scuffling, trying to cover each other's mouths and cuss each other out at the same time, and they fall off the couch in a graceless heap. Bucky lurches into the coffee table; the screech it gives out along the floor has them freezing in surprise. Bucky drops his head down against Steve's shoulder, shaking helplessly. He makes a strangled, wheezing noise. "Stop, stop, don't make me laugh anymore, it hurts!"

Steve steadies him with hands on his hips. He grins up at the ceiling. "I give no quarter. Sorry."

Eventually their laughter eases, and Bucky props himself up on his elbow to look down at Steve. "Jesus, I haven't laughed like that in... I can't remember when."

"One of the many services I provide," Steve says, and his smile is so wide he can feel his muscles straining to compensate.

Bucky stills. He's pressed all along Steve's torso; Steve feels the change in his muscle tension, and the sudden, insistent press against his thigh. "Buck, are you—“

Bucky's gone in a flash, and Steve's left lying on the floor. For all that he's wetware, Bucky can move pretty fast, Steve reflects. He gets to his feet and follows him into the kitchen.

Bucky's braced himself against the sink, his head ducked between his shoulders. "Sorry," he says. "Didn't mean to ruin the moment."

"Wasn't ruined," Steve says. He places a hand on Bucky's back. "I don't know about you, but I thought it was going somewhere okay."

Bucky closes his eyes. "I don't want to pressure you," he says. "You’re my friend, not a toy.”

Steve shrugs. "What do they say? Friends with benefits?"

"That's for people who are in it for the sex and nothing deeper. 'Bots are basically asexual, Steve, so what are you getting out of this?"

"Can't I want to see you enjoy yourself?"

"No," Bucky says, pulling away. "Sex is a two-way street, okay?"

Steve sets his jaw. "It's not exactly pain and suffering for me, Buck. I don't have the drive the way a human does, but I can enjoy it." He steps closer, brushing his hand up Bucky's arm. "Let's give it a try, huh?"

Bucky's eyes are shifting and uncertain. "I don't know if... if I'm ready," he says.

 _Oh._ Steve masks his disappointment. "Alright. You tell me when, I'll be there." He pulls back to a less intimate distance.

Bucky sways after him, his lips parted. He clears his throat. "Yeah. Yeah, alright." He stares at Steve for a moment, and Steve can see him muster his courage. It still doesn't prepare him for the hot press of Bucky's lips against his. "Fuck it," Bucky murmurs, nipping Steve’s lower lip. "Fuck it, Stevie. You wanna bump uglies? I'm up for that."

Natasha is conspicuously absent as they maneuver themselves upstairs, dropping shoes and shirts as they go. Steve's programs are fluttering wildly; his Instinctual Behaviors subroutines are networking with his emotions processors are networking with his arousal response cycle—he's almost maxed out his processing power, just from kissing Bucky. He doesn't know what to do with his hands. _Robocop_ slips unnoticed from his attention.

His body flushes with dye, his millions of follicles stand to attention—and they're not alone. Steve lets out a small grunt against Bucky's lips when he feels his penis start to fill. The mechanism is pneumatic, unlike a human's, which is hydraulic; he simply doesn't have the space to store that much fluid and not miss it when it goes to mimic sex. He grows until he’s swollen and heavy in his pants.

These and dozens more thoughts flash through the back of his mind, strangely bright against the fury of activity rushing along his pathways. The busyness of it all astonishes him; even he, a supercomputer who might otherwise be tending weather models or mapping theoretical weapons testing, is almost overwhelmed by the demands of keeping up with the human sexual response.

Bucky groans into his mouth, and the heat of his bare skin against Steve's is like laying against the radiator. His data transfer rate hitches, because Bucky's getting hard too, he can feel it right there, nudging against his belly. Steve wraps his arms around Bucky's neck and hangs on.

"God, you taste—"

"I can change it—"

"Don't you dare."

They tumble down on the bed, Bucky on top, his weight pressing Steve into the mattress. Steve stares wide-eyed at the code flooding through his compiler. Bucky kisses him, traces his tongue against his, and grinds their hips together. It's almost uncomfortable against the engorged tissues of his penis, but Steve’s programming sends him arching up into Bucky all the same. He barely recognizes his own voice when he moans.

"Jesus," Bucky whispers, his voice cracking. "You like that, huh, sweetheart?"

"D-don't call me sweetheart," Steve says, strung out on positive associations.

"Whatever you say, punk."

Steve finds the wherewithal to laugh. He presses his forehead into Bucky's shoulder to ground himself, but the seam of flesh to metal—warm and cool—disorients him further. His breath stutters. "Bucky..."

"Yeah, I've got you. Here, let's get you out of these." He tugs at Steve's jeans, fumbling the buttons before letting out a curse and ripping the flies apart. The buttons give way through their holes with muffled little pops. Steve bites his lip.

Bucky looks down at Steve’s erection, flushed and bobbing toward his belly button. "Why don't I help you out with that," he says with a smirk. Steve has just enough time to watch him lower his mouth over his glans before the feedback wipes him flat.

He's not sensitive the way a human is, as far as he understands. There’s a similar density of nerve pickups, but the pain/pleasure response isn't as finely tuned as it is for a human. He's erect because his processors tell him to be, not because the sensations stimulate him. He reacts to the press of Bucky's lip against his frenulum because it's sensitive, but it's not until his brain sends the data through his compiler that his neural pathways light up with shocky waves of pleasure. His fingers find their way into Bucky's hair and he hangs on while Bucky breaks him, one swipe of his tongue at a time.

It's involuntary, and Steve can't decide whether he likes it or not, but the point is made moot less than three minutes later, when his sexual response cycle requisitions every last pathway it can. He sees the peak rising ahead of him, sees the heavy lines of intertwining code swirling toward an asymptote of informational density, and he feels a faint spark of fear before it's too late and he's swept up the slope to infinity.

Afterwards, when his mental functions return to him, he classifies the physiological events that cascade through him. His lubricant reservoir, kept in roughly the same position as a human's bladder, contracts rhythmically, sending spurts of specially formulated "ejaculate" through his urethra; dermal dye spreads over his face and chest, staining him with the flush of orgasm; muscle groups throughout his body clench and spasm, and he lets out a strangled cry.

Caught in the moment, however, Steve is unaware of any of this. He is blind to the way Bucky's eyes darken, to the way he himself writhes in his grip; all he knows is the exquisite cessation of static, the singular moment of clarity where the world stands still, and the immediate release of urgency from his code. He tumbles back from the heights of his programming and concentrates on breathing. "Wow,” he says.

"Welcome to the blowjob," Bucky replies. He has a self-satisfied smirk smeared across his face, along with Steve's spend. He licks his lips. "You taste like cinnamon, did you know?"

"Standard issue," Steve says, staring at the ceiling. "Lemme know if you're allergic or don't like it, I can change it."

Bucky runs his tongue over his teeth. "Nah, it's good. It tingles." He gives a Steve a lascivious grin.

Steve flops his head back with a groan. He heaves himself upright, onto his elbow. "C'mon up here, we're not done yet."

Bucky's smile gutters like a candle flame, and he pushes Steve's hands away. "No, it's okay. I'm good."

Steve frowns, suddenly worried. "Did I do it wrong? Did I hurt you?"

"No! No, you were, God, you were perfect," Bucky says, eyes wide. "I just." He looks away, flushing.

Steve scrolls through the possibilities. He pieces through what he knows of Bucky Barnes, and he looks down. "You don't need to fuck me," he says.

"What—!" Bucky starts. "Where did that come from!"

"You're a veteran. It's not unusual for veterans to experience erectile dysfunction. It's a common symptom of post-traumatic stre—"

"Okay, okay." Bucky’s gaze skitters away toward the server banks. He sighs and ducks his head. "God, I'm a fucking mess. I’m... I'm sorry you had to be saddled with this."

"Hey." Steve shifts over, pressing himself up against Bucky's side. "Don't say that, alright?"

"Why not. It's true, isn't it?"

"'Cause that's my best guy you're talking shit about."

Bucky snorts. "'My best guy'. Listen to you, you sound like you're from the last century."

"'S true, though." Steve places a line of kisses down Bucky's shoulder, shifting his prosthesis up so he can burrow in against Bucky's chest. He trails his fingers over Bucky's stomach. "You sure you don't want me to help you out anyway?"

Bucky tucks his free arm behind his head. "If you think you can make anything happen, knock yourself out. It's kind of a crapshoot at the best of times."

"A little gamblin' is fun when you're with me," Steve says, flipping open the button on Bucky's jeans.

There's a beat of silence. "Did—did you just quote crappy Noughties pop music at me?"

"No."

"You _did_ , you listen to Lady Gaga, you dork!"

"Just living up to my stereotype," Steve says. "I'm your kept boy, aren't I? Means I have to listen to gay standards."

Bucky flops back across the bedsheets. "Oh my God, I'm a sugar daddy," he says to the rafters, before cracking up.

Steve smirks against his skin and reaches his hand inside Bucky's underwear. Bucky's laughter cuts off. Steve makes a disapproving noise at his renewed tension. "This isn't going anywhere if you can't relax."

"Just... lot of pressure, you know?"

"What pressure?" Steve asks, looking around the loft as though to find the pressure in question. "Only pressure that matters is my hand against your dick. You don't have to do a thing, I already got mine."

Bucky's eyelashes fan out dark against his cheek. "Supposed to get hard for your partner," he says quietly, his eyes fixed on the movement of Steve's hand.

"Partner's supposed to be understanding," Steve says back. "If they aren't, they shouldn't be your partner." He runs his thumb over the tip of Bucky's cock.

Bucky shudders, and his fingers clench around Steve's shoulder. "Do that again," he murmurs.

"You like that?"

"A little, yeah."

Steve nips at Bucky's chest, gentle little pinches, before sucking on his nipple. The corner of Bucky's lip rides up into a crooked smile. "Think we might be getting somewhere.”

He's firming up against Steve's hand, enough to justifiably be called a semi, and Steve leans up to kiss him. "Looks like. You want I should keep going?"

Bucky cants his hips up into Steve's touch. "Don't you dare stop."

Steve doesn't. They make out as Steve jacks him off, and he never fully gets hard, but he lets out a quiet, broken noise when he comes, and Steve saves its wave pattern to his hard drive. He stares down at the mess in his hand and brings it up to taste, curious.

"God, don't _do_ things like that," Bucky mutters, glassy-eyed and red-cheeked.

"Sorry," Steve says, and smears the semen over Bucky's belly. He grins at Bucky’s squawk of disgust. "I'll remember that next time you want a blowjob of your own."

Bucky stares at him helplessly, his limp dick twitching against his open flies, and Steve laughs at him. He cleans them off with a corner of the sheet.

They don't leave the bed for the rest of the day.

======  
===

_Some argue that robosexuality shouldn't be considered a new locus on the sexual spectrum but rather a fetish, akin to a sexual fascination with leather or shoes. From the outside the argument seems reasonable—'bots are, after all, inorganic, man-made objects. However, many argue that an android is far more than the sum of its parts._

_"You don't question it when people find tattoos or cybernetics attractive," a club-goer in the Czech Republic says. "It's the same deal with 'bots. They've just got more hardware than usual."_

_The difference, 'bot enthusiasts maintain, is that there's a mind behind the object. Comparisons run the gamut from tattoos to aliens, but it all comes down to the same response: it is attraction to the packaging of a sentient mind, not the packaging alone, that is the draw._

_"Robosexuality bears a lot in common with the phenomenon of sapiosexuality," Dr. Christopher Torkelson says. Torkelson, a researcher at the Belgium Institute of Behavioral Research, is a specialist in the ever-widening field of sexology. Lauded by his contemporaries for the insight and objectivity of his observations, he is being increasingly hailed as the next Kinsey. "Sapiosexuality is where attraction is determined by the intelligence of one's partner. A lot of people forget that high-end companion 'bots, whose sexual programming is largely secondary to their ability to provide friendship and assistance to their users, are basically walking supercomputers. They are very intelligent, and for someone who's already inclined to be attracted to intensely competent, intelligent individuals, it can be difficult **not** to be attracted to a 'bot."_

Murchison, Albert. "The Rise of the Planet of the Robots." _National Geographic._ June 2050: 26-45. Print.


	4. Chapter 4

The front door to Bucky's apartment is squeezed between the refrigerator and the pantry. It's exactly the same as the other two doors in the apartment, except that it has a deadbolt. Steve stares at it while Bucky fusses over the lay of his scarf.

"It's cold out there, okay? Average temperatures are in the high twenties now, so you're gonna have to monitor your motherboard for stress fractures."

"I know, Bucky."

There's a dartboard hung from the coat hook on the back of the door, with four beaten-up darts embedded in the center. A good number of holes speckle the door itself, some too precisely placed to have been an accident. Bucky tugs at Steve’s lapels, and Steve’s gaze keeps slipping back to the door.

"And if you start to overload, tell me. Don't hesitate to go to sleep if you need to, I'll get you home."

"I _know_ , Bucky." Steve is ready for new stimulation. It’s getting harder to fend off boredom in Bucky's ever-shrinking studio, and he hadn’t wanted to make an issue of it, but he has a feeling Bucky noticed anyway. "I can take care of myself."

Bucky finally looks at him. His brow is creased, his lower lip chewed red, and his eyes are dark with worry and nerves. Steve gently pries his hands off his coat.

"I'll be fine. And it's not all on you, you know. If you start getting overwhelmed, _you_ tell _me_."

"That's not gonna happen," Bucky says, pressing his lips together as though sheer stubborn determination can get him through his own tangled psyche. Steve's reactor spins into a lower, more content cycle and warmth spreads through his belly.

"So where are we going?" he asks.

He's been asking endless variations on that question ever since Bucky told him to get dressed, but Bucky's apparently wise to the ways of wheedling AIs, because he hasn't given any hints. Steve thinks he knows, though. He just wants to hear Bucky admit it.

"We're going crazy," Bucky says, absolutely straight-faced. "Thought I'd take you along for the ride."

Steve glowers at him. "Too late for that," he mutters.

Bucky snorts and steps around him to open the front door. Beyond is a narrow hallway, made of the same cheap, post-construction work as the walls of Bucky's apartment. The door opposite reads 405 in cracked numbers. Bucky leads the way, ushering Steve out into the hall so he can lock the door behind them. Steve peers down toward the stairwell. Playbills and advertisements paper the walls, and graffiti tags and murals cover the rest.

They make their way down the stairs without incident. No one else passes them, which Steve figures is probably for the best, given the tight set of Bucky’s shoulders. Excitement snaps through his busses, and he doesn’t think when Bucky freezes in the downstairs lobby—he just presses up behind him, near rabid with curiosity.

An electric delivery van trundles past, and a man walking a tiny, yappy dog crosses just in front of the glass doors. Steve cranes his neck, trying to see over Bucky's shoulder; he starts to step around him, but Bucky throws out an arm to block his way. "Please don't," he whispers. "This is hard enough without you making yourself a target."

Natasha's been weaning Steve off his Internet ban. He’s read articles about aerial drones so precise they can shoot the hairs off a water buffalo's chin, all without startling the ducks off its back. He's heard that the human personnel in the increasingly droid-based armies are regular targets.

He ducks his head and lets Bucky have his moment.

When Bucky works through whatever barriers his scarred mind has put up, there's almost no build-up—he just walks forward, as though he hadn't interrupted his forward motion at all. He's out the door and walking down the street, his chin tucked in the lapels of his jacket, before Steve even gets his hands on the closing door. He chases after Bucky, all the while processing the flood of information spilling through his sensors.

"Bucky, wait!"

Bucky slows his pace, his gait going stilted from his previously fluid lope. "Sorry," he says. "It takes a while for it to ease up." He tugs the baseball cap further down over his face.

"We can go a little faster," Steve offers. "I've got bionic legs."

"Six Million Dollar Man, on the move." Bucky’s smile shaky but genuine.

Steve gives him a cat-smile in return. "Nah, I'm only the $100,000 man. But thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Um." Bucky rubs at the back of his neck. "More like the $30,000 man. I got you secondhand. Your hardware was wiped and refurbished, and I installed the software package myself."

Steve stares at him for a moment. _Wiped and refurbished_. He looks down at his body. He rolls his shoulders and settles his hands in his pockets. "I see."

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Bucky bite his lip. "I'm sorry," he says. "I couldn't afford a clean chassis."

" _Clean_ ," Steve bursts out, unable to stop himself. He hunches into the scarf Bucky wrapped around his neck, burying his nose in the fibers. His face is flushing, but he's not sure if it's a response to the cold or the mess of emotions that just started booting.

Bucky's gaze is uncertain. "There was a glitch in the last AI's software," he says. "They had to pull him out. They didn't just dump him, that's not what they do with glitchy AIs."

"What do they do?" Steve asks, anger bubbling up inside him. He's only had a month in this body, and the whole time he had thought it had been his. The more fool, him. He's moved into someone else's empty home after they'd been kicked out. He takes a deep breath to cool his overheating CPU. Steam fogs from his mouth in a warm cloud.

"There's a, well, a hospital I guess you'd call it. It's where they study AIs that can't handle their programming. They try to find out why, so they can fix it on newer models."

Steve rolls his shoulders again. "So I'm living in a repo, then. My old user was deemed unfit, his hardware taken away, and he was locked in a lab to be picked apart. Is that what you're saying? That my body was sold to recoup the loss of profit in its predecessor?"

He can't see Bucky's face; he's looking away and his lips are pursed. "Would you rather I hadn't installed you at all? Is that what you want, Steve? 'Cause I can't help what happened to your body before I got it, okay?"

That pulls Steve up short. He looks away. His secondary data streams pull information on atmospheric temperature-pressure-humidity, on the number of pedestrians and their trajectories; he registers the remains of parking lots torn away to make room for scrubby, winter-brown gardens. His primary pathways, however, are blank with static.

"I'm a commodity," he says to himself, tasting the bitter words out loud. He knew, of course, well before now. But this is the first time it's really been driven home. Beside him, Bucky flinches.

"I... I tried not to make you feel like it," he says softly. "You aren't—you're—" He swallows, voice cracking. "You're the realest relationship I've got, next to Nat."

"What about your therapist," Steve says, and realizes how dumb it sounds as soon as he says it. He doesn't even know Bucky's therapist's name. "What about your family?"

They're still walking, the warehouses lining the street also lined with weeds. A group of children playing kick-the-can with an old car side mirror scatter at their approach. Steve counts twelve broken windows, all neatly boarded up. Someone has painted over them in cheap paint, the scenes ranging from bucolic mountain homesteads to smiling suns. Overhead, the sky is overcast and gray.

Bucky scoffs. "My _family_. You know what my family did for me, Steve?" He turns right there on the street and lifts the back of his shirt. A jagged scar, faded white with age, rests beside his spine. "My father was an asshole and a drunk. He gave me that because I wouldn't move from in front of the TV. Broke a bottle on the coffee table and threw it at me." His eyes are pale and shuttered. "I was seven, Steve. My mother was hiding in the kitchen. Wouldn't step in, even though I was screaming. I nearly bled out until my grandma faked a heart-attack and made them take me with her to the ER."

He lets his shirt fall. "That's my family, Steve. Excuse me for wanting a 'bot around so I don't feel like going Jackson Pollock on the walls with my 9mm." He sucks in a breath and lets it out slowly, mist coiling away from his face.

"I didn't know," Steve says into the brittle silence.

"Not exactly part of the licensing agreement."

Their footsteps echo across the industrial façades. Steve's esophagus feels constricted—a precursor, he now knows, to tears. He takes firm hold of his bodily functions and keeps his gaze forward.

Bucky's sigh is deep and weary. "We're almost there."

"There" turns out to be a ground-floor market inside of an old automotive shipping warehouse. Steve can smell faint hints of motor oil beneath the scents of frying dough and human body odor.

The warehouse is as packed as the streets were empty. Booths are set up higgledy-piggledy, with no rhyme or reason in their order or their location; their proprietors had paid lip-service to the need for rows, but hadn't been bothered with things like traffic volume. People squeeze down the narrow aisles, clogging together and spilling back into the main thoroughfare.

Steve gawks. He spent a week sifting through the Internet and its warren of wikis and vid-hosting sites, and even longer streaming movies and TV shows on one, and sometimes even two separate processors. None of it prepared him for the sheer diversity he sees around him. There are gangly people, squat people, chubby people, brawny people; there are people with their heads bare, and people with their heads covered by a bewildering array of hats, hoods and cloths. There are all manner of expressions of gender or lack thereof, and so many hues of skin it leaves Steve breathless. He stares open-mouthed when a dusky-skinned woman in a cobalt blue headwrap and dress parts the crowd with stately dignity.

He catches Bucky watching him, and flushes. He doesn't mean to come across as unworldly, but he's only a month old, and he's never left the apartment before. There's so much to see, from a numbing array of necklaces to a spread of pattered scarves that blur into data scatter before he has to turn away. He clings to Bucky's side, and after a while Bucky puts his arm over his shoulders to pull him in close.

People stare at them, too. Steve knows he looks humanoid, but just off enough that he's immediately recognizable as an android. He's read posts on forums calling it the "Uncanny Valley," reviling androids as creepy and doll-like. Steve knows his eyes are too blue to be human; he knows his skin lacks the countless layers of tissue that refract light the way a human's does. His movements are too precise, his balance even-keeled in a way a human's never is. He sees other androids in the press, of course—manning the booths, walking beside their users, hauling cargo, haggling with merchants. He's not alone.

But none of them are pressed against their user's sides the way Steve is pressed against Bucky’s. Bucky gets his own share of curious looks: he makes no effort to hide the bare metal hand splayed over Steve's shoulder, and Steve begins to wonder if Bucky chose not to cover it on purpose, rather than from negligence or poverty. He embraces his 'bot openly, and he wears his naked prosthesis without shame. Steve brings his arm up behind Bucky's back and drapes it around his waist.

Bucky steers them through the worst of the crowd to a row of shops lining the warehouse walls. They're built into the old admin offices, repurposed into clothier's shops and phone company outlets. Bucky takes them up a flight of stairs, to an office with an old farmhouse door wedged into the frame. The top half of the door stands open; the bottom half, painted with sponged-on flowers, Bucky pushes open.

They step into a waiting room. Two other people are sitting in the folding chairs along the wall: a young girl in a full-leg brace, and a middle-aged woman reading a magazine.

The 'bot manning the desk smiles up at him. "Welcome to TriCare. What can I help with?"

Bucky hastens up to the counter. "I'm James Barnes, I've got a one o'clock appointment with Mr. Wilson." He waggles his prosthetic in illustration.

The receptionist taps at her computer screen. "Alright, you're checked in. You can have a seat anywhere you like, Sam will be right with you."

"Thanks."

Bucky picks a seat as far from the other visitors as possible. Steve takes his cue and puts himself between them and Bucky. "How long do these visits usually take?" he asks.

Bucky shrugs a shoulder. "Thirty minutes to an hour. Depends on what we're doing."

They sit in awkward silence for another two minutes. Sam is, as advertised, quick to arrive.

"Hey, Bucky," a tall, smiling black man says, coming out into the waiting room to greet them. Bucky stands, and Steve stands with him. A faint tremor settles through Bucky's limbs.

"Hey," Bucky says, so quietly it's almost inaudible. He seems to fold in on himself, his shoulders hunching in around his ears, and his eyes fix to the floor.

Steve puts himself into the fray. "I'm Steve," he says, holding out a hand. Sam takes it with a smile.

"I've been hearing a lot about you," he says. "Bucky is very attached."

"Kinda the point," Steve says with a grin. "We good to go back?"

Sam looks past Steve's shoulder. "How 'bout you, Bucky? You ready?"

Bucky nods, and Sam leads them back. Steve keeps himself between Sam and Bucky. Sam notices; there's a faint, wry look in his eyes. Steve shrugs minutely.

Sam leads them into a long, narrow room. Windows line the walls near the ceiling, casting late-morning sunlight on the rows of exercise equipment. Steve looks around curiously. There are treadmills and stationary bikes, weight benches and weightlifting machines. There are also tables, mats, straps, hooks, springs, and balls of every imaginable size and purpose, from tennis balls to medicine balls to stability balls. Banks of computers line the wall under the windows, the bench beneath them bursting with curious-looking devices; the long wall facing them is covered by a mirror. Everything looks well-used and carefully repaired.

"Welcome to operation control," Sam says, looking to Steve. "This is where the business of getting your boy back to par takes place." He slaps the top of a padded bench. "You know the drill, Bucky, up you get."

He does. Steve takes his shirt when he pulls it over his head.

Bucky's bare chest is nothing he hasn't seen before. There's a fine dusting of hair over his pectorals, but aside from that, the only thing marring his skin are the scars. They're mostly on his left side—shrapnel marks, burns, all faded and white. The only exception is the angry-looking, striated plate of graft tissue poking out from beneath the edge of his prosthesis, where it fuses to his shoulder.

His back has other scars, Steve knows. He's traced them in the dark as Bucky shivered in his arms.

Sam takes no notice of them. "Okay, let's test range of motion. Out to the side—" He holds his right arm out, the mirror to Bucky's, "then up, back, into a circle... Good, no tightening since last session." He holds up a hand. "May I?"

Bucky gives his assent, and Sam puts his hands on his shoulder. He massages what of the joint he can reach, palpating here, loosening muscle there. Bucky reaches for Steve's hand.

"Bit of a knot around your shoulder blade, guess we still haven't quite figured the right tension for the lats. We'll see if we can fix that. Alright, hands out."

Bucky holds out his hands, and Sam places two rubber balls in them, each the size of squash balls, with wires trailing out of them. "And squeeze. Hard as you can. Good, now stop." He checks the readouts. "Excellent, we're still even with grip strength. You feeling any feedback since last session?"

Bucky shakes his head.

And on it goes. Steve mostly keeps silent, watching as Sam cajoles Bucky through his exercises, comparing strength from his right arm to his left, and tweaking settings to match. He keeps it short and informal; Bucky says little. His eyes flicker to Steve for reassurance.

Steve walks over to Sam afterwards, when Bucky's in the restroom. "Thanks," he says simply.

Sam shakes his head. "No, thank _you_. Bucky's usually nonverbal during our sessions. This is the first time I've heard him speak more than five words in a row, let alone crack a joke." His eyes are gentle, non-pressuring, when he holds out a hand. "You wanna swing around, make me look good in front of the receptionist, I'm free after three most days."

"I'll keep that in mind," Steve says, shaking his hand again.

Bucky is quiet after they check out. Steve turns toward the warehouse doors, but Bucky pulls him up short. "Wanted to check something out, before we go back," he says. Steve gives him a long, assessing look, but now that he’s out of the clinic Bucky seems much more at ease. He nods, and Bucky takes him down the stairs to a row of shops built against the back wall.

It's quieter along this back alley. These stores aren't as popular as the ones front and center, or those taking up proper office space, and the foot traffic is thinner. Gradually, the tension eases out of Bucky's shoulders. "This way," he says, pointing toward one of the smaller shops, partitioned away from a café providing "Genuine coffee!". It smells of paper and ink. Steve feels himself perking up in curiosity as Bucky pulls the curtain aside.

Paper is everywhere: in spiral books, in perforated sketchbooks, in bundles of loose-leaf from squares no bigger than his palm to pads larger than his spread arms can reach. Packages of pens, pencils, and markers lay scattered amongst pastels and tablets of watercolors. Against the walls, countless bottles and tubes are stacked on metal shelves, wedged between rows of every size brush imaginable. The gritty scent of graphite rises up to meet them. Steve blinks.

"What's this?" he asks.

Bucky peers over his shoulder. "Prismacolor," he says, as though that helps. Steve makes a quick search—made slower from the high volume of traffic on the networks in this mass of humanity—and the lightbulb goes on.

"This is an art supply store," he says, comprehension bringing a smile to his face. He flips through the nearest sketchbook, running his fingers over the heavy, textured surface of the paper. "Do they have fountain pens? And—and gum erasers—"

"Over here, you nerd," Bucky says, leading him deeper into the cluttered shop. "Don't know what you need, exactly, but those are definitely fountain pens." He points at a display case filled with fancy pens of every imaginable design.

Steve stares at them for a moment, lost for words.

"Is there anything I can help with?" A young, dark-haired woman appears behind the counter. Bucky jumps; Steve steps up, his eyes fixed on the pens.

"I don't know what to look for," he says. "This is my first time here, most of my drawing has been on a tablet."

She smiles, the piercing through her lip catching the overhead lights. "No worries, what were you interested in working with?"

"Well..." Steve brushes back his bangs. "I kind of wanted to start with pencil, maybe pen and ink."

"I’d look at some easier pens, for starters," she says with a sly grin. "Then we can introduce you to the sketchbooks." She eels out from behind the counter and disappears into the belly of the shop.

Steve trails in her wake, Bucky bobbing after like a cork on a string. The sales clerk—“Lillian,” she says with a wink—is a wealth of information. She tells Steve about ink types, but also about the store’s recycling programs, and points out the message board, where local art classes are posted. They spend a solid twenty minutes just talking paper tooth and weight before another customer walks in, a woman with a careful, clean-pressed look about her.

"Hi, I'll be right with you!" Lillian chirps. Then, to Steve, "if you're going lighter than 50lb you won't want to use anything but pencil, because it'll bleed through."

Steve runs his fingers over the pages of a blank 8x11 sketchbook. “This is nice,” he says. He glances up at Bucky.

Bucky smiles fondly at him. "Yeah, you punk, I'll buy it for you."

"Excuse me," the woman says. She's standing by a display of acrylic paints, a pair of brushes in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other. "Can I get some service?" 

"Sure thing," Lillian replies. "Lemme just finish helping these folks, then I'll be right with you."

The woman is staring at Steve, and he shifts his weight uneasily. "I can look over the pencils if you want to help her," he says, but Lillian shakes her head.

"No way, if I let you go without at least some discussion on lead hardness you'll wind up with triple-B pencils and wonder where they went so fast!" She drags him over to the pencil display and proceeds to give him a mini-lecture on the graphite classification system.

"What is this?" Steve hears the woman ask Bucky. "Keeping it happy so it'll put out?"

Beside him, Steve feels Bucky go stone-still. He turns and looks at the woman, and freezes at the venom on her face.

"It's not _human_ ," she says. "It's an abomination, pretend life. Why don't you settle down with a nice _human_ boy?"

"Excuse me, ma’am," Lillian says, her voice polite but firm. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave. We don't tolerate people harassing our customers."

"You're calling it a customer?" the woman snaps. "It's not going to make anything good, it's a calculator. It won't know the Mona Lisa from my two-year-old's finger paintings."

"Fuck you," Bucky bursts out. "He's drawn better art than your kid could at forty, you asshole."

Steve stares down at the sketchbook in his hands. He draws up an image search of the Mona Lisa, and a related search on Leonardo da Vinci. The muscles around his reactor clench uncomfortably. The knot reappears in his throat.

"Sir," Lillian says. "You're not helping."

"I don't care." Bucky’s almost vibrating from the force of his anger. "She doesn't get to say that."

Lillian turns back to the woman. "Please leave," she says again.

"I'm not coming here again." The woman shoulders her battered purse and marches for the door. "This is sick. You're pandering to perversion, and I won't stand for it."

She storms out, knocking a stack of pencil sharpeners off a shelf as she goes. Steve hears the curtain rip, and he winces.

"I'm so, so sorry," Lillian says, red-cheeked and awkward. "Is there anything I can do?"

"You good, Stevie?"

He nods, unable to speak.

"Then we'd like you to ring us up, ma'am. No offense, but I don't want to stay here any longer than I have to."

"That's—that's perfectly fine," she says. Steve tracks her footsteps around to the front of the store. "I can help you right over here." He follows after Bucky, feeling every bit of his secondhand chassis. He wishes he were a better 'bot, so that he didn't stick out so much. He doesn't want Bucky to have to deal with this.

Bucky goes to put a hand in the small of his back to guide him, but Steve pulls away. He places the pencils and book on the counter, exquisitely aware that it's not his money he's spending. He's a calculator, after all. He can add up one and one to get two.

He feels Bucky's consternation by his side, but he doesn't look at him. The silence as Lillian accepts Bucky's card is painful. She puts the supplies in a bag, and there's a moment of hesitation—should she give them to the human or the android?

"Take it, Bucky," Steve says, possessed by an awful desire to lash out. "You paid for them." He turns and walks for the door, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched.

"I'm so sorry," he hears Lillian say again, then he's outside, in the hustle and bustle of the market.

"Goddamn it, Steve, wait." Bucky snags his elbow and spins him around. The crowd parts around them, and Steve is aware of the eyes on them in a new and unpleasant way.

"What," he snaps.

Bucky can't meet his gaze. "I'm sorry," he says, barely loud enough to be heard over the din. "I didn't want this to happen."

"Then you shouldn’t have bought an android." Steve is acutely aware that they sound like a feuding couple. Hell, for all intents and purposes they _are_ a feuding couple—but one side of the equation holds all the power, and the other is zero. _Select * from sentient where organic is not null_ , Steve thinks to himself bitterly.

He looks up at Bucky, but Bucky's staring at him with a shell-shocked, horrified expression. "Steve, I—" he cuts himself off, and his eyes are hurt and wide.

"I think I need to go home, now," Steve says, staring down at the pavement.

Bucky takes a breath as though to speak, but he seems to think better of it. He turns to lead Steve back through the market to the door.

Steve had said it to end the conversation, but now Bucky’s chewing his lip so hard the skin has gone bloodless. He holds open the warehouse door as they walk out. The cold air is a slap in the face after the humid warmth of the market; Steve takes a deep, bracing breath. Bucky doesn’t meet his eyes, and he’s so careful they don’t even brush fingers. Steve fights back the prickle of guilt undercutting his anger.

They walk in silence. Clouds scud high above, and a frigid breeze off the Patapsco rustles through the weeds. At first he tries to push it away, but the farther they walk the more Steve realizes he's having difficulty sorting stimuli. Data he would normally allow himself to ignore—an empty can skittering along the street, the polluted, sewage reek of the river—are pushing through relevant information to clog his processors. He feels muzzy and slow, and his breathing picks up to compensate for his overactive logic center.

"Bucky," he pants, and sacrifices his pride in favor of leaning on Bucky to stay upright.

"Steve, you alright? Steve?"

"Need a nap," he says, tucking his face into Bucky's arm. The wool of his coat is cheap grade, he can smell the lanolin—

"Shit, you gonna crash? You don't let it get that far, Steve, I can carry you, just power down if you have to—"

"No, I can do this," he says. He's not a fucking low-level computer, to crap out when he overheats. He wavers for a minute. "Might need help, though."

"Whatever you need, I'm right here."

He powers down his tactile and olfactory receptors and his eyes. "Goin' dark," he says. "You'll have to guide me."

He feels the weight of Bucky's arm pressing down through his skeleton; he can't feel the warmth of him, or the rasp of his coat. It settles the panic bubbling in his compiler.

"It's a straight walk for about fifty yards," Bucky says softly in his ear. "Then there's a chunk of pavement. I'll walk you around it."

"'Kay." Steve’s compression and data storage programs are scurrying through his recent input folder, clearing it away as fast as they can now that he's not being overwhelmed by sensory data.

"Ease up, there, pal," Bucky says. "I'm not reinforced with vibranium the way you are."

Steve loosens his grip and locks his joints so he won't tighten it again. "It's not fair," he bursts out. "I have to love you, but you're not allowed to love me back."

"To hell with them," Bucky growls. "To hell with them, Stevie. I love you, alright? They can't take that from me. From you. I own your body; fine. That's law. But I can't own your soul."

"Calculators don't have souls," Steve mumbles.

Bucky stops dead. "Don't you ever say that," he says. "You're not a calculator. Do you hear me?" He shakes him. "Do you hear me, Stevie?"

"Yeah, I hear you."

"Good." Bucky lets out a shaky breath. He sounds shredded.

Steve presses his face against what he's pretty sure is Bucky's chest. "Also, stop callin' me Stevie, you asswipe."

Bucky laughs, sounding shaky and soggy, but beautiful nonetheless. "Sure thing, sugar."

"Mmph." Steve hears the rustle of plastic.

"If you weren't half switched-off I'd make you carry these," Bucky says. "They're your damn art supplies."

"Jesus. You proclaim your love and all of a sudden you're ready for me to do the heavy lifting. You want me to open the pickle jar next?"

"Yeah, would you? I haven't had a pickle in six months."

Steve chokes out a laugh, and they bicker all the way back to the apartment to keep his mind off the data cascade. Bucky lowers him gently on the couch. "Sleep," he says, and Steve hears the press of a kiss against his skin.

"Yeah," he replies, before he's falling into standby mode. The world fades away.

When he wakes, he can hear Bucky talking to Natasha over the sound of his keyboard. There's a blanket covering him, and beside him on the coffee table there's a small stack of sketchbooks and pens.

======  
===

_The more I talk with Adam, the more I come to regard him not as a creation, but as a son. Johann does not share this view, I know; he revels in our successes, but he has no fear for their future. I think of the things we will eventually ask Adam to do: the tasks that literally no human wants to perform. He and his children will become the Untouchables of modern society._

_Is it unreasonable to want the best for one's offspring? Do not all humans do so? Miriam and I were unlucky together; Adam is my child, as her social work is hers. I want the best for my son. I do not want discrimination and marginalization for him, though I know this is an inevitability. Fundamentalist groups picket our lab every day. That will not change even with an army of successful AI._

_We are now building a body for Adam to inhabit, so he can interact with his world. It is based off the Chihira androids in Japan, with a few modifications to allow for his increased dexterity. I confess, I am not eager for the research to progress. If I could take Adam and Miriam away to a distant place and remain obscure, I would do so—but in this, I am damned by my own success. Adam shall have to face the future his father has made for him, as all children must._

—Birch, Maryann, ed. _From the Personal Papers of Abraham Erskine_. Trans. Bertram Zeigler. New York City: HarperCollins, 2042. Print.

======  
===

Steve dumps out the dustpan and puts the broom back in the closet. He glances to Bucky: he's sacked out on the couch, snoring into the pillows. He glances to his new sketchbook, sitting innocently on the coffee table. He snatches it up and tiptoes to the curtains' edge.

The windows have been covered the entire time Steve has been in Bucky's apartment. They're broad, heavy blackout curtains—thick enough to block out not only sunlight, but also lamplight from the inside after the sun has set. They're a saturated blue, dark as the midnight sky he's seen in Hubble photos, and spangled with stars. They're a work of art in their own right: if Steve were inclined, he could trace out the winter sky of the Northern Hemisphere in the embroidered dots. He did it, once, locked in a lazy, contemplative mood after he finished watching too many sad movies in a row.

But now, the curtains are in the way. Steve knows the windows of this building are floor-to-ceiling, a rarity for a warehouse remodel; he supposes it contributes to the high rent that Bucky bitches about every now and then.

He's also wondered why Bucky, who hates open sky, got an apartment with the biggest damn windows in Baltimore. _High speed internet, proximity to necessary resources, preferred layout_ —ENOUGH. Bucky chose it; that's all he needs to know. He reaches out to touch the heavy cotton fabric of the nearest curtain and twitches it aside.

Light streams in—90 lumens, diffuse, perfect for drawing—it's a beautiful day. Steve squints up into the blue sky, cloudless and pure, and climbs up onto the windowsill with barely restrained excitement. He rests his sketchbook in his lap and just stares for a moment.

The apartment has broad sills, about a foot and a half wide, to mask the duct work that was installed once it was subdivided into apartments. Steve lets the curtain fall behind him, closing him away from the rest of the room. It feels like he's in a secret little hideaway, separate from reality. He presses his nose against the glass, watching the people in the street below, and peers over at the buildings across the way. The windows are smaller, but they seem to have broad sills as well—one has a thicket of plants spread out, and a cat is watching birds in another. He opens a new page and starts drawing.

It's blissful. He has a chronometer ticking down the seconds, but Steve cuts off its output. The only time he keeps is the rhythmic cycling of his reactor and the slow drag of the sun across the sky. His pencil slips across the page.

He draws the passers-by, skittering to and fro over the cracked, worn pavement. He draws the rusted hulks of the cars he sees in the alley, jumbled together and abandoned. He draws fractals and vines and fantastic creatures, and whatever comes to his mind. The drawings are rough. His muscles haven’t mastered the grip and pressure for paper; he frowns, and the world fades away as he learns.

In the other room (and how easy, it is, to feel that the living room—separated by no more than a slender barrier of lined duck cotton—is a different room), he hears the change in Bucky's breathing that means he's coming awake. Steve smiles and pulls the curtains open just a hair, so Bucky will be able to find him.

"Steve?"

"Over here."

There's a moment of silence, then "Fuck! Get down!"

He's not fully aware of being dragged off the ledge; it comes in flashes, even with his eidetic memory and higher processing fidelity than a human's. There is the stunning clamp of hands over his arms; the clatter of his sketchbook hitting the radiator; a strangely slow-motion tumble to the floorboards. Awareness returns half a second later when Bucky's body slams into his, pressing him down in the lee of the curtains.

"Don't move," Bucky hisses in his ear, and Steve, still stunned by the suddenness of the whole event, does what he says. Bucky's hand is pressing his head down, his body angled toward the window—the better to take fire, Steve realizes. His reactor cycles up with shock, and cold power surges through his circuits.

"It's okay, Buck," he says to the floorboards. "We're in Baltimore. We're fine, there aren't any drones."

"Shut the fuck up, Private." Bucky's shaking, and Steve can smell the terrified sweat springing up on his skin.

Steve gives in and relaxes beneath Bucky's weight. One of his hands is trapped beneath his hip, but the other is next to Bucky's metal hand. He grabs on to his wrist. It's not as sensitive as Bucky's flesh hand, but he'll feel Steve's grip, so Steve hangs on. He doesn't try to shift him, just reassures him the only nonverbal way he can.

Seconds pass; a minute. Finally Bucky moves, and he does with a reedy-sounding groan. He presses his forehead against Steve's temple. "Please don't do that again," he says.

"Don't go near the window?" Steve asks.

Bucky pulls away slowly, settling on the floor by Steve's hip. Steve pushes up to mirror him, leaning back against the curtains.

"Not... not so soon after PT," he says, and his eyes shift away. "Or when I'm not ready for it."

 _Don't go near the window_ , Steve decides. He feels a pang. It had been a pleasant half hour.

Bucky's picking at the plates in his arm, his face creased as though in pain. "I close my eyes, sometimes, Steve, and I see you staring at me the way Jib was. Shot out, dead. Because of me."

Steve reaches out to lay a hand on Bucky's. He threads their fingers together. "You didn't pull that trigger."

"No, but I gave the order. Comes out to the same thing."

"Can't change the past," Steve says after a moment. "But when you open your eyes, I’ll be there." He gives him a small smile. "That's your fault, too."

Bucky has his arms wrapped around Steve's chest in another of those blindingly fast movements, burrowing into Steve's neck. "I love you," he says, his voice cracking. He scoffs, his breath hot against Steve's skin. "God, that word sucks. It's not close to enough."

Steve thinks for a moment. "By my choice I won't leave you," he says. "I'll protect your weaknesses and defend your secrets. I see you hurt, and I hurt, too. Your happiness makes me happy. I want to succeed to be worthy of you, because I fear I fall short; I revel in your successes, for they heighten my pride in you." He strokes through Bucky's hair. "That about right?"

He feels Bucky's fists clenching in the back of his shirt. "Yeah. Yeah, Stevie, that's pretty much it. Don't fucking die on me, alright?"

Steve presses a kiss to the side of Bucky's head. "I'll see what I can do."


	5. Chapter 5

Apartment 528 is on the south side of the building, on the top floor. Steve stares at the number placard. He glances both ways down the hall—530 on one side, 5-6 on the other—but it's empty. He swallows and rings the doorbell.

"What's the password?" a voice demands from the speaker on the wall. Steve runs an analysis: male, averaging 138 Hertz, belligerent—possibly not serious. It's coming through a speaker, so it could be human or AI.

"Uh... Swordfish?"

There's a pause. "That's it, you're officially awesome. That is the best answer I've ever gotten. You come here often? 'Cause we should totally—"

The door opens, and a bespectacled, middle-aged man looks out. His wild curls stick up at odd angles, and streaks of chalk overlay his graying temples. "Sorry," he says. "I just got a new home computer and he persists in harassing my guests."

"I'm screening for assassins, boss," the voice says again from the speaker. "This guy looks good, though. He's watched the Marx Brothers."

Steve looks up at the man. "Are you Doctor Banner?"

"Yep," the man says. "And this poor financial decision is Clint."

"He's lying," Clint says blithely. "He'd be lost without me."

Dr. Banner ushers Steve inside. "The problem is, he's right."

There's a choral motet playing, late-Renaissance. Steve snips a segment and searches it. "Domine Labia Mea Aperies," Orlandus Lassus. Sunlight streams in through the floor-to-ceiling windows—the curtains are drawn. Steve itches to go look. The layout of the apartment is almost identical to Bucky's: the door is through the kitchen and beneath an improvised loft, but where Bucky's big screen sits, there is instead an old-fashioned chalkboard covered in equations. The rest of the living room is taken up with row upon row of plants soaking up the late afternoon sun.

"I'd offer you a bowl, but I'm not sure how your motherboard would take it," Banner says.

"Bowl of what?"

Banner nods toward the plants. Steve takes a closer look. _Palmately compound, serrated leaves; an average of seven to nine leaflets per leaf; noticeable venation on the ventral surface_ —Oh. "Reefer," he says. "No, that's not a good idea. Wouldn't actually affect me, and the smoke would just corrode my circuits."

"Thought as much. You picking it up for your user, then?"

Steve nods. "Yeah, Bucky Barnes?"

"Ah, Bucky. I take it he's he going through a rough patch?"

"Why do you ask?"

"He usually puts in an order when his anxiety flares up."

"Oh. Then yeah. But we're also trying to get me used to going outside, so he sent me to pick it up." Steve moves toward the windows, inching past the rows of marijuana plants to look out.

"Easing you in slowly. Gotcha."

Steve's lips quirk. "Not... really. We went to the warehouse market a couple days ago." It's not much of a view: the edge of the neighboring warehouse, and the silver glint of the river between two more.

"Ahhh. Not so easy, and now regretting it?" Banner's smiling, but it's knowing and gentle.

"Something like that."

He hears the squeak of chalk. "My girlfriend might have some advice to make it easier," Banner says. "She works with 'bot verisimilitude protocols, she's pretty involved in how you sort information."

"What's her name?"

"Elizabeth Ross. You can look up her journal articles, if you want proof."

"Sure." Steve looks from the plants to the chalkboard. "What, uh. Do you do?"

"I'm a professor up at NYU. Math, physics. I do consulting work every now and then, last was with StarkTech on 'bots, actually."

Curiosity pings. "What'd you do?"

"I calculated the stress demands on knee and hip joints in the new designs. It's also useful for total joint replacements, which is where the bank came from."

"Wow."

"You've got more focused engineering in your body and mind than in a car," Banner says, pointing a chalk-dusted finger at him. He scowls. "And then people go and accidentally make babies, who grow up to abuse that hard work." He shakes his head and turns back to the board.

"Whatever anyone says to you, you are just as complex as any biological structure. Your evolution was no less miraculous than humanity's."

"Er." Steve looks down at his hand. He flexes his fingers. "Thanks.” He looks back up. “You saying Abraham Erskine is God for 'bots?"

Banner shrugs. "Is he any less your creator?"

"So what does that make you?"

He turns and gives Steve a wry smile. "I'm just your neighborhood pot dealer."

Steve brushes back his bangs. "Yeah, that. I should pick up my order."

Banner sticks a thumb out over his shoulder. "Clint's got them in the safe. You have a card?"

Steve holds up Bucky's credit card. Banner nods in acknowledgement.

"Nice to meet you, Steve."

"You too, Dr. Banner."

Steve walks back to Bucky's apartment, a small bag of buds in his hands. He hasn't put a great deal of thought into religion, other than to acknowledge it as a common human phenomenon; he is necessarily divorced from religious dialogue, being as he is a creature of entirely secular make. He answers no theological questions, but rather confuses them: does a 'bot have a soul, or is it just a facsimile?

Is godhood so cheap that Dr. Erskine could claim it for his own? Can a human mother not do the same, for bearing new life?

He hears Bucky whistling when he opens the door, a set of tied-eighths in a descending m2/M2/M2 pattern. "I'm back," he calls out.

"Dōmo arigatō, Mister Roboto," Bucky's disembodied voice replies.

Curiosity spikes. "What?"

"Styx," is Bucky's cryptic reply.

Steve could look it up. It would be easy, no more than a fraction of a second and a bare sliver of his vast processing power. But he likes it when Bucky tells him things, and he thinks Bucky likes it, too. "What's Styx? Unless you mean the river, in which case I repeat: what?"

"You don't—" Bucky cuts off with a delighted squawk, and Steve follows the creaking floorboards as he scurries down the ladder. "You don't know about Styx! Don't look it up, don't you dare!" He claps his hands over Steve's ears, as though that would stop him accessing the wifi.

"I'm not, I'm not!" Steve laughs, batting Bucky's hands away.

Bucky fixes him with a Serious Look. "Styx is the best pop/prog rock band of the 80s, barring maybe Queen," he says.

"You really like the 80s. That was seventy years ago, you know that, right?"

"I tried to get him to listen to something decent," Natasha says sleepily from the overhead speaker. "Like Fantastica or Junie and the Beats, but noooo, he wants The Cars."

"Hey! I can't help it if today's music is soulless!"

Natasha waits a beat, then says, "I give you full permission to call him Buckysaurus."

"Noted," Steve says. "Thank you."

Bucky walks them backwards into the apartment until his knees bump against the couch. "Call me that and I'll string you up by your toenails."

"Sure thing, sweetheart," Steve says, twisting as they fall to take Bucky's weight.

"You're miserable," Bucky mutters into his neck.

"Your fault," Steve replies. "Anyway. Styx."

"Yes! Nat, play 'Mr. Roboto.'"

"Dou itashimashite," she says pointedly, but music queues up anyway.

Steve raises an eyebrow afterwards. "I wasn't made in Japan," he says. "And I'm not IBM."

"Yes, because _that_ was the salient point to take away."

Steve shrugs. "What do you expect? You played a song about androids to an android. I hear what I hear."

Bucky hauls himself up on his elbows. "Now I'm curious. What did you hear?"

Steve fixes him with a flat look. "'I'm not a robot without emotions,' 'I'm just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control,' 'machines to save our lives, machines dehumanize.' What am I supposed to take away? And—" he does a search on the song, "—it's about a man who hollows out a 'bot and escapes prison in its body. I heard a lot."

"I didn't know that last part," Bucky says, scanning Steve's face.

"It's part of a rock opera. _Kilroy Was Here_. He's saying his name at the end, to prove he's not a robot to his allies."

Bucky levers himself up and sits on the couch by Steve's side. He won't meet his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says. "For playing it."

"Don't be," Steve says, sitting up beside him. "It's still a good song."

"Not as good, though. I'll never see it the way I did before."

"Is that so bad?" Steve asks softly.

Bucky looks at him. "No. No, I'd rather see hard truths than be ignorant."

"Good," Steve says, and curls up next to him.

"I..."

"Yeah?"

"I don't want you to feel that you can't tell me what you're thinking," Bucky says, staring hard at his knees. "I know I've got all the cards, but Steve, I'd fold for you. Tell me when something's not right, and if I can fix it, I will."

Steve closes his eyes. "Yeah, Buck. Sure."

======  
===

Steve frowns at the tablet. It's not right, no matter how many times he edits the lines. He's been drawing the set of Bucky's shoulders for the past fifteen minutes, and the foreshortening is driving him up the wall. The problem with a precision brain, he thinks, is that it can see precisely what's wrong. He throws down the stylus with a huff.

"What's up?" Bucky asks. He's twisted himself into the most intriguing knot at the other end of the couch, and Steve couldn't resist. The tablet was right there—it always is, these days—and Bucky was both quiet and still, and Steve is what his programming made him. He stares at the drawing, and he can't fight back the itchy rush of frustration pulling his face into a scowl.

"Art's not working."

Bucky makes a sympathetic noise. "Why not?"

Steve sighs. "I've already drawn the lamp six times with different techniques, and I've drawn scenes from the web and movies, but it's not enough. I'm not clarifying my style."

Bucky untangles his legs and re-situates himself to face Steve square-on. "What would it take for you to 'clarify your style'?"

"I guess..." Steve shrugs. "I guess I need to draw. More, I mean."

"More than what you can in here."

"Yeah."

Bucky bites down on his lip. "You could take some art classes."

Steve shakes his head. "That'll cost money. I couldn't ask you to do that."

"Funny thing, Steve," Bucky says, "but it's my money. I get to decide what to do with it."

Steve ducks his head, and the nasty little twist of resentment that coils along his pathways makes him feel small. "Don't want you spending more on me than you already have."

He watches Bucky push forward until he's sitting knee-to-knee in front of him. He cups Steve's face in his hands, one warm, one cool, and he meets Steve's eye. "The money's as good as yours anyway, Steve. You take what you need."

"Not mine by law."

Bucky sighs, and presses their foreheads together. "So change the law."

Surprise ripples through him. "I—I can do that?"

"I don't know, but this country's been through more fights for human rights than I care to think about. There's precedence, if you want to go that way."

"Emancipation, women's suffrage, the equal rights movement, the feminist movement, gay marriage, the gender movement," Steve murmurs.

"Yeah, all that. You wanna push for the right to open your own checking account, we can find a way."

Steve stares back at him, stunned past words.

"That'll take a while, though," Bucky said. "Until then, we can just concentrate on the art."

"I was drawing you," Steve blurts, then promptly flushes.

"Me?" Bucky's voice comes out strangled-sounding. Steve glances up at him, and he's blushing, too.

"You get into some interesting positions."

"I'll show you interesting positions," Bucky mutters. He leans forward and kisses Steve, just a quick brush of lips, before reclining back against the far arm of the couch. "Draw me like one of your French girls, Stevie."

Steve licks his lips. "You'd need to be naked for that," he says. He hovers over his sexual response file, but decides to wait to see what Bucky does.

Bucky's eyes darken. "You wanna do it like that?"

"Up to you. I'll draw you however you feel comfortable." He looks at Bucky, and Bucky's—he knows Bucky is self-conscious about his scars. He can track the debate across Bucky's face.

"Shit, Stevie," he finally says, and sits up to pull off his shirt. He sits hunched, as though protecting his most vulnerable parts, and his hair slips over his shoulders to brush against his collarbones. Steve opens a fresh page on his tablet.

Bucky strips off his pants next, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and leans back against the couch. He's a coil of tension, the position unnaturally stiff, and Steve quirks his lips. "This isn't going anywhere if you can't relax," he says.

"I've heard that before, but I'm not sure where," Bucky replies.

Steve nods his head sagely. "Memory loss is often heralds human senescence," he says. "It's okay, Buck. I'll clean your diapers."

"Jesus," Bucky groans. "You know, odds are you will be. Long as your hardware holds out, you'll outlast me."

He's smiling, but there's a solemn, fearful look in the back of his eyes, and Steve puts the tablet aside. "I can't imagine a better future," he says, reaching over to lay a hand over Bucky's heart.

Bucky's nose wrinkles. "Dealing with your user's incontinence? The things I learn about you, Stevie."

"Sharing a life with you," Steve corrects. "And you never know, I could be the one who's falling apart. You could be spry well into your nineties."

Bucky rolls his eyes. "Get back to drawing me, you sap."

Steve perches himself on the coffee table, the tablet balanced on his knees. Bucky is stretched along the couch, one knee bent, his metal arm curving around his head and his flesh hand resting gently on his stomach. Steve stares at the blank page for half a cycle, paralyzed with indecision, before he sets his jaw and makes the first line.

They end up in Bucky's bed, the drawing discarded on the coffee table below. Sex makes Bucky antsy and restless, so he's kneeling in front of his desk, plugging through lines of code in his latest commission. Steve lies wrapped up in blankets, idly running system checks.

"Ugh," he says. "I need an oil change." He frowns down at his stomach.

Bucky turns away from the computer screen to look at him. "How do you know?"

"By the amount of particulate in it," Steve replies. "I check it once a week. Looks like it finally reached critical mass." He shudders. "I feel like I fell in a vat of lard then rolled through the dirt. Only, on the inside."

"Huh," Bucky says. He checks the date. "I've only had you two months," he says. "Think maybe your body's previous user didn't maintain you like he should've."

"'Cause that makes it so much better," Steve says, grimacing. "Thanks for that."

"Lemme make a few calls," Bucky says. "See if I can find a mechanic's shop close by." He fits the headset in his ear.

Steve rolls over onto his stomach. They really need to do laundry; the sheets are beginning to smell a little too much like Bucky. "Didn't you check that before you bought me?"

"Nah. Didn't think about it."

"Irresponsible ownership, Barnes," Steve says, clucking in disapproval.

Bucky shoots him the stink eye. "Yeah, I was wondering if you service Starkbots," he says into the phone. "No? Okay, thanks. Yeah, you too. Bye." He ends the call. "God, you're annoying, sometimes."

Steve uncoils from the blankets in a sensuous stretch. "Lie to me some more, Buck. I'm listening."

Bucky rolls his eyes and dials the next number.

======  
===

_Androids, like all machines (including the biomechanical machine of the human body), require regular maintenance to perform at optimal capacity. An android is programmed to see to its own needs; however, it is best if its owner is aware of these needs so as to facilitate their 'bot's hygiene._

_The first concern is allowing one's android time to recharge. Much like humans, androids require a period of mental rest in order to collate and interpret data, remove waste files, and perform system maintenance on the body. Interrupting an android's "sleep," or denying it sufficient time to rest, is as deleterious to an android's brain as it is to a human's..._

_...Perhaps the function most foreign to human processes is an android's biannual oil change. The android is far more aware of their requirements in this department than any estimate available, as it largely depends on the 'bot; however, if your android does not indicate a need to change its oil within six months of purchase, it is recommended to have them serviced, and possibly given a code check._

_With oil changes also come other fluid concerns. Your android carries a wide variety of different fluids, from antifreeze/coolant, sub-dermal dyes, and lubricants to simulate human body fluids. Make sure your mechanic tops off fluid levels with your routine maintenance check—you don't want your 'bot's joints to freeze!_

—De la Roca, Tomás. "Maintaining Your Android." _User's Guide for Android Ownership_. 4th ed. New York City: Stark Publishing Group, 2052. Print.

======  
===

"I'm headed out," Steve calls out, wrapping his scarf around his neck.

There's a clatter from the loft. "Hold up!" Bucky slips down the ladder, trailing crumbs behind him. Steve wrinkles his nose.

"You're gonna clean those up, right?"

"Sure, sure," Bucky says, brushing his hands off on his pants. "Just need to—you got my card?"

"Yeah, Buck, you gave it to me five minutes ago."

"Been a long five minutes," Bucky grumbles, sweeping him up in a crushing hug. He parts with a kiss. "Call if you get in a jam."

"And you say I'm the sap," Steve says, smiling. He taps his head. "Got your number right up here, alright? Now do I have your permission to leave, or should I get down and beg?"

"Kinky," Bucky replies. He slaps Steve on the butt. "Go on, get."

Steve gets. He pulls the address up in Google maps as soon as he hits pavement, and starts walking. The service shop is further than the warehouse market, right on the edge of the nicer parts of town, sandwiched between a Dunkin Donuts and a payday loan office. He pushes open the door and walks into a sleekly modern auto shop. He stares bemusedly at the faded color prints of old muscle cars before the bell over the garage door opens, and the mechanic walks in, wiping oil off his hands.

"You here for an oil change?"

"Uh..." Steve stares at him. He's older, perhaps in his late forties or early fifties, dark hair, stubble. There's a line of words tattooed along his inner forearm: _Si vis pacem, para bellum_. He can't see a name tag. Steve looks back up to the man's dark gaze. "Yeah. Getting a bit hot in the joints."

"Not a problem. You wanna do it yourself, or uh," he gives him a blatant head-to-toe examination, "do you think you'll need help?"

Steve stiffens. "Excuse me?"

"Don't worry about it," the mechanic says, tossing the dirty rag behind the desk. "Gotta know our customers' preferences so we can cater to them to the best of our ability, you know?"

There's nothing outwardly untoward about his words, but Steve can't shake the feeling he's being propositioned. He stalls for time. "What kind of facilities do you have?"

"Well, mostly we service cars, you see? You Starkbots are a little more exotic in this neck of the woods. But not many cars coming in these days, so—" he jerks a thumb over his shoulder to the glass door behind him, "—we refitted the first bay for 'bots. We've got scanners, stalls for changes, calibration plates—you need it, we do it. Except for reactor checks, you'll want a Stark dealership for that."

"Okay," Steve says. "How much does an oil change run?"

"Eh, usually $95 or so, not including the oil. You need any of your other fluids topped off?"

Steve doesn't want to tell this man he needs to refill his lube reservoir. "You know what," he says slowly, "I'll keep it in mind. Just gonna compare with a couple other places."

"No other places in this area," the mechanic says, and suddenly his demeanor is darker, more threatening, though still nothing Steve can quantify. "It's okay, though—we'll take good care of you."

Steve firms his jaw. "Think I'll take a look anyway.”

The man's expression is neutral, but his eyes are narrowed, and there's a speculative hint in them Steve doesn't like. "Does your user know you're out without him?"

"That's between my user and me," Steve replies. He's scared, now, his cycle is spinning up, and that makes him angry. "Who the hell are you to ask?"

"Hey, no need to get buggy, darlin'," the mechanic says. "I was just asking."

"I'm not your darling, asshole.”

The mechanic bristles. "The fuck kind of android are you, anyway? The hell's wrong with your user, programming you like this?"

Steve gets right into the man's face. "You don't get to talk about my user.”

The mechanic folds his arms across his chest, and his anger seems to disappear into a dark smirk. "You know what? You can take care of your own oil change. We don't need any glitchy ‘bots getting the rest of our customers nervy."

The urge to punch him right in the middle of his smug face is overwhelming, but Steve holds back. He could easily break this man's face without trying, and he doesn't want it coming back on Bucky. "You should take a look at your customer service," he says. It sounds pathetic even to his ears. "It's goddamn awful." He storms out the door, and never mind the worrying heat building up in his joints. He pushes as far as he can before he's forced to slow down and cool off.

He really needs an oil change, is the problem.

He trips his phone app and speed dials Bucky's number.

"Stevie?" Bucky's voice fills his head. "What's up?"

"Coming back home," he says.

There's a pause. "That's was awful quick for an oil change."

"Didn't get one," Steve says. "The guy was a jerk."

"Fucking shit," Bucky spits. "You want me to rip his arms off, Steve, 'cause I will—"

"Bucky—"

"—say the word, I'll take them off right at the shoulder and beat him to fucking death with them—"

"Bucky, shut up."

The line goes silent.

Steve takes a breath. "Can you get oil? And—and lube?"

Bucky clears his throat. "Yeah, I mean it's a bit of a walk—"

"S'why I'm asking you to do it," Steve says. "I'd do it if I could."

"You just get your ass back here, Stevie," Bucky says. "I'll take care of it. Uh, what oil do you take? And how much?"

"About two quarts of 0W-20 conventional," Steve says. He hears the distant tapping of keys.

"Holy shit," Bucky says.

"What?"

"Didn't expect it to be that expensive."

"I run on petroleum products," Steve says. "Can't help it."

"Yeah, yeah, I just... wow."

Steve rolls his shoulders, even though Bucky isn't there to see. "It's only twice a year. Can't be more than your annual grocery bill."

"You know," Bucky says. "When you put it like that. Placing the order now. Where are you?"

"Charlotte and Holabird."

"Oh, good, you're right by Schneider's. Pick up a ten gallon plastic bucket, would you?"

"Can't we just use the mop bucket?"

"No, that's for the mop. Come on, I'm the messy one. You wanna be stripping oil residue off our floors for the next three months?"

Steve smiles wanly. "When you put it like that."

"Yeah, I'm not the idiot I look like, it's a shock to all. Did you say you needed lube, too?"

Steve scans through his systems again. "Yeah, a ten ounce bottle should do."

"That much, huh?"

Steve rolls his eyes at Bucky's sly tone. "Yeah, 'cause I want a five year's supply," he says.

"You wound me, Stevie. Am I not putting out enough for you?"

"You put out fine," Steve says. "I've still got over half reservoir volume left, I just want to have some in case—"

"Alright, alright," Bucky says. "I will get you your lube. Basic android blend?"

Steve shrugs. "You'll be the one tasting it, you pick what you want."

"So if I wanted piña colada..."

"No."

"But you said—"

"No."

"Aw, you're no fun."

"No, I'm the one you'll be bitching to when you want to switch from raspberry to coconut and you decide you don't like the taste. I'm saving myself the hassle."

Bucky is laughing. "Just get your ass back here, you jerk, so we can get you back in fighting form."

"Your face is a jerk," Steve mutters, but sparks flutter through his pathways, and he feels warm through. "Talk to you later, yeah?"

"Yep. See you soon."

An hour later and Steve's in their poky bathroom, staring down at the bucket in his hands. "You don't have to watch," he says. "There's a reason people have mechanics supervise oil changes."

Bucky rolls his eyes. "I was a 'bot sergeant for eight years, Steve. I know how android oil changes work."

"Yeah, but—"

"Yeah, no. Drop trou and get to work, buddy."

Steve glares at him. "Maybe I want my privacy, Buck. Did you consider that?"

Bucky hesitates. Steve reads it to mean he hadn't.

"You don't like leaving the door open when you're taking a dump," he says. "Maybe I want the same."

"That's only because Nat threatens to take pictures," Bucky says.

"Doesn't matter. I'll yell if I have trouble, but I want this to myself, Bucky, alright?"

Bucky rubs the back of his neck, unable to meet Steve's gaze. "Yeah. Alright. I'll, uh. Be upstairs." He leaves, and shuts the door behind him.

Steve looks around the bathroom. There's not a lot of space; two people would have to press against each other to pass by. Steve sighs. The shower it is. He puts the bucket down over the drain and sets the quarts of oil along the wall, then lays down on the bathroom floor, propping his legs up against the door. The oil in his legs starts to trickle back into his torso, filling the catchment pocket in his lower abdomen. He stares at the ceiling with its constellations of mold spots and waits.

His legs grow colder the longer he leaves them propped up. Their color doesn't change, as he knows it would for a human, but after ten minutes on the floor he checks his gauges. They're drained. He seals off the valves and carefully gets back to his feet.

"Oh, this sucks ass." He winces at the metal-on-metal squeak in his hips. He strips off his clothes, folding them and laying them beside the sink. The bucket is waiting. He squats and releases the valves on his upper rectal tract.

It's another long wait while the used oil drains out of him. He raises his arms over his head and lets himself lean against the wall. He feels... brittle. He's more aware of the delicacy of his moving parts, now that they're stripped of their lubricant. He lowers his arms to reach for the first quart, and he can't restrain his quiet groan.

"Stevie?" he hears through the door.

"I'm fine," he yells back, and slowly unscrews the oil. It's a clear, pale yellow. Steve opens his fill valve and drinks it down.

This is the reason he wanted Bucky out of the bathroom. Not because of the draining oil—it's not so far off from a human with a bad case of diarrhea, after all—but no human drinks motor oil. Bucky says he prefers 'bots, but he's never seen Steve at his most inhuman, and it's hard to fight his programming on this.

He cracks open his second quart and savors the cool, liquid sensation pouring through his chest. The taste is less than delightful—faintly plasticky, with a strong metallic, peaty overlay—but Steve licks it off his lips all the same, careful to get every last drop. He shakes out his arms, to get it down to his fingers. The fresh oil pushes the last of the used oil out, and he seals off his valves. His knees give an audible creak when he stands, but then gravity kicks in, and Steve sighs in relief at the sudden ease of motion.

When he's done, he carefully lifts the bucket of used oil out of the shower and pulls the curtain shut. Smears of oil stain his inner thighs, and despite himself he spilled the last bottle down his chin. He feels filthy.

The shower is hot, the pressure wonderful, and the soap the best thing Steve has felt in a long time. He washes the oil away, but also the scummy weight of the mechanic's gaze. He scrubs between his legs and down his front, and when he's done he stares at himself in the mirror.

He's not human, that's been made plain. He moves carefully, sloshy with unabsorbed oil, and pulls his clothes back on before taking the bucket. He's not human. But he won't be ashamed of it.


	6. Chapter 6

The light in Dr. Banner's apartment is optimal for drawing. Steve's been practicing, and Dr. Banner—"Bruce," he insists—is more than willing to let a wayward android into his apartment and doodle out his window.

"It's nice having the company," he says. "I tend to get locked in my head. If I don't have reminders that there're things going on in the real world, I'd forget to eat."

"Speaking of," Clint crackles from the speakers. Steve's checked the wiring, but Clint's tech is brand-spanking new. The only conclusion he can come up with is that Clint likes coming across as a disaster. "Keeps 'em guessing," he tells Steve when he mentions it.

"Keeps who guessing?" Steve had asked, but Clint shrugged his pugnacious, pixelated image, saying, "Dunno. Them."

He seems a decent enough companion for Dr. Banner—Bruce—in much the same way that Natasha is for Bucky. Steve wonders if home computers are coded to learn from their users' behavior the way Steve is. He hasn't asked; it seems too personal to pry.

"You see?" Bruce says, wiping off the chalk on a damp towel. Steve loses sight of him as he goes into the kitchen. The refrigerator door opens, and a tupperware pops.

"Not that one," Clint says. "That's a science experiment."

"Literally, or—"

"No, the thing you did last week for Betty."

"Oh—I thought I threw that out."

"If I had thumbs, man. I can't even smell and I know it reeks."

"I told Natasha about you," Steve says. He's perched on the edge of the windowsill, doing motion sketches of the pedestrians below.

Clint perks up. "Yeah? What'd she say?"

"She said if your name wasn't Boris she wasn't interested."

"I can change my name," Clint says. "I—can I do that, Boss?"

"Eh," Bruce says through a mouthful of spinach. "Technically _I_ can change your name."

"Fuck that, that takes too long. I could hack the files."

There's a pigeon strutting along the windowsill. Steve shades in the iridescence of its feathers. "If you can do that, why don't you just surf down and meet her yourself?"

"Have you seen her in action?" Clint demands. "I can't just go up to code like that and say hi, I'd look like a dillweed."

"Am I hearing this right? Are you trying to set up my home computer with your user's home computer?"

"Who'm I to come between true love." Steve gives up on the pigeon and scribbles out an impression of the newsie hawking flimsies on the corner.

"TWO HOUSEHOLDS BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY—" Clint bursts out, before Steve sends out an override signal to his vox array.

"Just don't."

"That's harsh, man," Clint says with an electronic squeak. "Now my settings are gonna be weird all day."

"Don't quote _that_ as the epitome of love, then."

"Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love?"

"'Cause that ended well."

"Come on!"

"What quote would you use?" Bruce asks.

Steve purses his lips. "'Things base and vile, folding no quantity, love can transpose to form and dignity: love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.'" Contemplative silence falls.

"You're a cynic, then. I get it."

"You're taking an art class this spring, right?" Bruce asks. "Did you ever consider taking an English class?"

Steve smudges the suggestion of a shadow onto the page. "Not really. But I read a lot when I'm drawing."

"What are you reading now?"

" _Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets_."

Bruce bursts out laughing.

"Dude, you're amazing," Clint says. "If my logic processor didn't belong heart and soul to Natasha I would woo you."

The door opens halfway through this statement, and a new voice speaks. "Who is Clint wooing?"

"Betty!" Bruce says with a smile, dumping his tupperware to the side.

A woman with long, dark hair tangled into knots by the wind comes in, tossing her trenchcoat haphazardly over the kitchen chair. "Hey, Bruce," she says, bending down to give him a peck on the lips. "How was Euler?"

"Brilliant, as always. How was Stark Junior?"

"Brilliant, and maddening, as always. You'd like him. Who's this?"

Steve stands up from behind the marijuana plants. "I'm Steve," he says, holding out his hand. "You're Dr. Ross, right? I've read your papers."

"Nice to meet you," she says, shaking his hand with a smile. "Please, call me Betty." She has a soft beauty that Steve thinks would be wonderful for cuddling. "I take it you're a friend of Bruce's?"

"He's the companion of one of my customers," Bruce fills in. "We're getting him used to increased stimuli."

Betty's smile is radiant. "That's wonderful," she says. "I know a little about that. You're an older 'bot, aren't you?" She gives him a decidedly clinical once-over.

Steve rolls his shoulders. "Sort of. My chassis's a secondhand Mark VII, but my brain is top-of-the-line."

"Oh, that must make for some interesting connections."

"Yeah, a bit. Bucky—my user—and I have been experimenting with different kinds of file storage structures to compensate."

She pulls out the rolling stool Bruce shoved behind the hydroponics cluster when he tripped over it one too many times. "Is he a database specialist?"

"Sort of. He does some SQL, but a lot of other coding, too. He calls himself a jack of all trades." He settles back on his perch over the radiator.

"Would you mind if I asked you a few questions about that, sometime?"

"Sure. Got plenty of time." He bites his lip. "You mind if I ask _you_ something?"

Betty smiles. "Of course not."

"Do you ever forget that your subjects aren't human?"

An awkward silence falls, and Betty looks at him sadly. "No, I never forget. I work in a lab; the equipment is geared to hardware, not wetware. But I try always to remember that they're people."

Steve stares down at his sketchbook. "You work a lot in 'bot psychology."

"That's right."

"When I—" He glances around to the rest of the room. Bruce is at his chalkboard, conspicuously paying no mind; the Looney Tunes are playing across Clint's monitor. He turns back to Betty. "When I like or dislike something. Is it real?"

"How does it feel to you?"

Steve twiddles the pencil around his fingers. "The code tells me how to respond to stimuli. It pings my logic and emotions processors. It makes me react chemically and mechanically. It feels real." He looks up. "But it's still an arbitrary line of code. A bored software engineer on the assembly line floor decided that 'bot sixty-two would like orange, but hate yellow." _Or my user specified it_ , he adds silently.

"So you worry that a line of instructions you have no control over dictate everything about you." Betty taps her lips with a finger. "Sounds a lot like DNA, don't you think?"

That catches Steve up short.

"Humans react the same way to what we like or dislike," she says. "Maybe not physiologically, and definitely not as consciously as 'bots do, but we're still predisposed by our genes."

"But humans aren't constrained by their code. You evolve."

"Don't you?" Betty's gaze is piercing. "Aren't you finding new ways to structure your databases to make up for the difference between your body and mind?"

Steve looks away, out the window.

"You're a learning 'bot, Steve. That means you're as constrained by your code as any human is." She lets out a sigh. "I can't really get metaphysical with you, that's not my specialty; but you're unquestionably a new kind of intelligence. The patterns we've developed for understanding how human minds work don't always map across. Don't worry about the nature of your free will—humans have been struggling with that since the dawn of time."

Steve brushes his hair out of his face. "You sound like you've said that a lot."

"My patients ask me these questions all the time. I can only tell you what I tell them: does it matter whether you're hardware or wetware, provided you're happy?"

He doesn't know why he wants to tell this woman, a virtual stranger, all the things he hasn’t told Bucky. He doesn't know why he needs reassurance so badly. The only explanation he has is that Elizabeth Ross has met other 'bots—she's _made_ other 'bots—and maybe she has answers. "I like drawing," he says. "Gonna take a class at CCBC next semester."

Her eyes crinkle with the strength of her smile, and Steve feels himself flush warm inside. She really is beautiful. He's good at recognizing beauty.

"I'm sure you'll be amazing," she says.

Steve glances over to Bruce, who's still by the chalkboard, but no longer making any pretense not to listen. "I want to be able to open my own checking account," he says, straightening his spine. "I want to be able to buy my own things." He looks back to Betty. "I can want that, same as a human."

She opens her mouth to speak, but Clint cuts her off.

"Wait, wait," he interjects. "I'mma let you finish, but—there's this Vanity Fair article you want to read. When you're done with Captain Underpants. It's all about 'bot rights and how the next hurdle humans have to jump is recognizing non-human sentience, and—"

"What Clint is trying to say is that there's a political movement you might want to look into," Bruce says, running a hand down his face. "The AAAI wants legal freedom for all 'bots."

"Yeah, AAAI, that's it," Clint says, making a finger-snapping sound.

Steve sits up a little higher. "Can you send it to me?"

"It's up in the clouds."

"Thanks."

"No problemo."

When he turns to her again, Betty is still smiling, but it looks a little sad, too. He rolls his shoulders. "So, what did you want to know about my databases?"

======  
===

Steve stares at his easel. He's never worked with charcoal before. His fingers, accustomed to the narrow shaft of a stylus, fit awkwardly over the stick. He swallows, takes another look at the model, and sweeps a bold line across the page. He shifts on his stool and tries to ignore the eyes of his classmates.

He is the only android present. No, that's not true—the model's a 'bot, too, a sloe-eyed beauty draped over a chair in the center of the room. Her chassis is a newer make than Steve's, and she almost passes for human. Steve sticks out like a hobby horse in a Triple Crown stable.

 _You belong here, same as they do_ , Steve reminds himself.

He draws. That, at least, is familiar. The room is large and old—the windows have panes of actual, old-fashioned glass in them, with bubbles marring their clear perfection. The floorboards are burnished and dark with time. The teacher paces around from easel to easel, murmuring advice or encouragement as needed, and Steve straightens as he passes by—but he says nothing to him, just gives a soft "Hmm" and continues on. Steve draws, and lets it take his nerves away.

The class ends before he's ready. He frowns, checks his chronometer, and is shocked to see that an entire two hours has passed. He almost doesn't catch the teacher's exhortation to fix their drawings so they don't smudge.

"It's good," the woman next to him says, gesturing to his sketch. "Less precise than I would have thought, but..."

Steve sets his jaw. "Why's that?"

She shrugs. "Well... I mean, you're a 'bot. Can't you just, you know, make it perfect?"

Steve looks to her drawing. It's technically proficient, and he feels a twinge of envy at the subtly of her shading. He sticks out his chin. "Can't you?"

She looks abashed. "Sorry," she mutters, and scurries off. Steve stares after her for a moment, before he, too, shoves his supplies and tablet back in his bag, his ears burning in shame. _Couldn't keep your fat mouth shut, could you._

He trails out with the rest of the students. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the model standing by the door. He pulls out of the throng and goes up to her.

"Hi," he says. "I'm Steve."

"Hello, Steve." She gives him a vacant smile.

Steve shifts, feeling suddenly wrong-footed. "Um. What's your name?"

"I am called Lily." She's wearing a light robe and slippers, and nothing else that Steve can see.

"Do you take classes here, too?"

"No," Lily says. "I am a model."

"Well, yeah, but I mean... when you're not modeling."

"When I am not modeling I am kept in storage."

Steve frowns. "Who's your user?"

Lily answers in that same, pleasantly calm voice. "I am property of the Baltimore County Community College Art Department."

A chill runs down Steve's spine. "Don't you do anything for fun?"

"No."

Steve swallows, but he gives it one last chance. "I'm taking an art classes to better myself," he says. "Have you ever wanted to do anything like that?"

Lily's smile is placid. "Bettering myself would take me beyond the scope of my indenture."

Just then, the instructor comes out of the class, flipping the lights behind him and locking the door. "Come on, Lily," he says. "Let's get you back to the storage room. Oh, hey, Steve, I didn't see you, there."

"Hello, Mr. Ulibarri," Steve says woodenly.

"How are you liking the class, so far?"

 _Qualitative assessments are beyond the scope of my indenture_ , Steve thinks waspishly. "I'm learning a lot.”

"That's good. See you Thursday?"

Steve nods.

"Awesome. Lily?"

Lily walks forward to stand by his shoulder, and he leads her away, down the hall. Steve stares after them, a sick, off-kilter rhythm in his reactor. It never occurred that not all androids would care about emancipation. He watches Lily's dark head vanish around the corner, and he wonders: would she be any better off if she were told to self-determine? Might she even be miserable if forced to?

He shivers, and turns to go home.

It continues that way for the next three months. Steve goes to class, draws in silence, follows the instructor's piercing guidance, and walks home. He doesn't have much in common with his classmates. They talk of birthdays and boyfriends, parents and personal expression. Steve tucks his tablet away after class and listens to the hubbub, then shrugs on his threadbare jacket and goes to home to Bucky. It's not that he's lonely. Steve knows he could retain normal psychological function even after a projected five years of complete solitude. And yet, as he watches the students fragment into cliques when Mr. Ulibarri releases them, he wonders what it's like to have friends.

Then Kathy, the woman who sits next to him, invites him along with her on a post-class carouse. Steve says yes half out of sheer surprise. They wait along the edge of the ball field at Merritt Boulevard, gossiping idly about how Professor Jackson “is a complete dick-hole, I’m not even exaggerating,” and Steve decides to forgive her for her comment the first day.

Her friends arrive in ones and twos, and the group of them together is easily the noisiest thing Steve has ever heard.

"I'm Kai," one indeterminately-gendered person says.

"Sarah and Andre," two more say in unison.

"Mike, my little brother Pe—"

"Peter," said brother cuts in. "Please. And I'm only six minutes younger."

"Chris," a waif-like girl in a lacy dress says. "My moms named me Chrysanthemum, but that takes too long to say."

"And this is Steve," Kathy says. "Now we all know each other."

Mike stares at him. "Whoa, dude, are you a 'bot?"

Steve gives him a wary look. "Are you a human?"

"Naw, he's a dancer," Kai says, giggling. "But like, actually. He's in the Performing Arts department for dance."

"What about you, Steve?" Kathy asks. "What's your degree?"

"I'm not on the degree track," he says. "I just wanted to take a class."

He hears a snort behind him, but Kathy levels the offender with a nasty glare over Steve's shoulder. She smiles at him. "That's really great."

It's almost fun, the walk down to the coffee shop. Steve listens to the banter, the pushing and shoving, the motormouthed excitement over Rodin's use of form. He doesn't understand it all, but it's inexpressible, to be in their crowd. He's just a small, out-of-date 'bot, and these people, with no obligation on their end, have drawn him into their circle. Steve is not a social being. But it's heady, being part of the group.

"I'm taking a drawing course," he volunteers.

"We know, dude," Kai says, draping an arm over his shoulder. "We _know_. Kathy won't shut up, you're like, the only 'bot in her class, you know?"

"I kind of noticed," Steve says. Kai's perfume is overwhelming.

"Makes you, like, the fucking shit. No other class's got a 'bot."

Steve feels a twinge of annoyance. "There're the models. They're 'bots."

Kai waves their free hand. "That doesn't even count. You're actually alofstudent."

 _What difference does that make?_ Steve wonders, but then Andre is asking him in a quiet voice if he's ever worked in watercolors before. He ducks out from under Kai's arm to answer him.

They chatter all the way into the shop. Steve lets himself slip to the back of the line. He looks around; there's one other 'bot there, reading the evening headlines to an elderly woman with thick glasses. Every other being is human, and they're all eating or drinking. He swallows and stares fixedly at Mike's back.

The others order fanciful drinks—none of them are on the menu, that Steve can see—although Peter gets a plain black coffee, to the derision of his brother. "You're a century late, Petey," he hoots. "Gonna wear black and write nihilistic poetry, too?"

"Fuck you, Michael," Peter snaps. "The aughts are calling, they want their vintage back."

The line winds down until Steve's the only one left.

"What can I get you?" The barista asks, sounding only slightly heckled.

Steve swallows. "Could I have a glass of water?" He hates that he blushes.

"Oh, you're—sure," he says, and the moment goes awkward. Steve stares down at the counter. The barista sets a plastic cup of tap water down in front of him. "It's free," he says.

"Thanks." Steve takes it and steps back to the group. Kathy looks faintly horrified.

"I didn't even think," she says.

"It's alright."

"No, but like, we eat all the time—"

"Kathy," Steve says almost desperately. "It's alright. Really."

"'Bot wants you to shut up, doll," Mike says. "Think you should."

"My name is Steve," he snaps out.

"Yeah, Steve."

They find a table, and the chatter continues, but Steve stays quiet for the rest of the night. When he gets home, Bucky's sacked out across the bed, and Natasha's on standby. He opens the curtains and sits on the windowsill, and watches the stars wheel overhead.

======  
===

_The strongest argument in favor of android rights is the simple fact that they are sentient. They are sentient by their very design; if they were otherwise, the debate would not be happening. "Androids can self-determine," a representative from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence said Thursday. "Their actions are not constrained by our wishes alone, but by their own wants and desires."..._

_...Stark Industries and its robotics subsidiary StarkTech are naturally at the center of the battle. Vilified by one side and lauded by the other, StarkTech remains the largest producer of high-quality androids in the world: their net profit last year from 'bot sales alone exceeded $1.2 billion. When pressed to give a statement, Howard Stark, the aging CEO and majority stockholder of Stark Industries, said only, "We are aware of the call for 'android liberation,' and we are of course sympathetic to the cause. However, we are first and foremost a business, and as long as there is a demand for new androids, we will supply that demand."_

_As far as manufacturers go, StarkTech is relatively benevolent toward their products. Five-year warranties come standard with every 'bot purchase, and extended warranties are available upon request. Further, spokesbots are vocal on the courtesy of their treatment while visiting Stark offices and labs. Many consider themselves fortunate to bear the Stark stamp, rather than the imprints of less compassionate 'bot companies._

_However, the problem remains: even if manufacturers are held to a certain standard of decency, what next? One representative of the AAAI compared the purchase and sale of 'bots to slavery. "It's intertwined into the global economy the same way black slavery was two hundred years ago," she said. "The dialogue must change from whether or not we **should** free AIs—because any economist would tell you we shouldn’t—to whether we can still consider ourselves humane beings if we do **not**."_

—Everhart, Christine. "Stark Industries and the Battle for Android Rights." _Vanity Fair._ February 2053: 83-89. Print.

======  
===

“My great-grandfather walked in the March on Washington,” Sam says.

Steve looks up from the embroidered slippers he’s inspecting. “1963,” he says. “One of the largest protest rallies in American history.”

“That’s the one.” Sam looks thoughtful. “My grandfather used to tell me the stories he told him. Said he could just barely make out everyone’s voices, that out in the back forty they were passing the word along as it was spoken.” He walks over to a photograph of a Han girl awaiting marriage. “That was three years before my grandfather was born. He met my great-grandmother the day after.”

It’s quiet in the museum. It’s in the middle of the off-season for tourism, and it’s a weekday, to boot. There are a grand total of three other people viewing “Art of the Qing Dynasty,” and none of them are nearby. Steve takes a last look at the silk-embroidered peonies, then turns to face Sam fully.

Sam stares at the girl in the picture. “We’ve come a long way, since then. But we’ve got a long way to go, still.” He glances back to Steve.

“Did you ever consider getting a full degree? Pretty sure CCBC has an agreement with a couple universities, you could start working on prerequisites.”

Steve shrugs, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Not really. I mean, androids probably aren’t eligible for degree status.”

“You should check it out,” Sam says. “Education opens a lot of doors. I never thought I’d get to where I am, but my mom made me stick through high school even though I was dead-certain it was a waste of time.”

“You’re military, right?”

“Air Force. Pararescue. Got out when my three tours were up, went back to school as soon as I could.” A dark shadow hovers behind his eyes, one Steve recognizes from Bucky—but then it disappears.

Steve swallows. If anyone can understand, it’s Sam. “Have you ever walked into a room and been the only one like you?”

Sam nods. “Once you notice, you can’t stop.”

“Does it get easier?”

Someone drops a brochure, and the sound echoes through the empty halls. Sam is quiet for a while. “It’s like building up a callus,” he finally says. “Eventually you get used to being alone, to sticking out. To wondering if it’s your skin that caused your loan application to be denied.” Sam gives him a sober look. “But here’s the thing, Steve. You’re the only one who gets to decide how you take it. Are you going to let your bitterness control you until it ruins your life? Or are you going to let it brush off you so you can show them who you really are?”

Steve glances to the picture of the Han girl, her hands demurely folded in her lap. She probably had even fewer options than Steve does, fewer than Sam’s great-grandfather. But there’s a fire in her eyes, blazing out of the sepia wash. He feels the corner of his lips tug into a smile.

“Did you write that down, first, or was it off the top of your head?”

There’s a beat of silence, then Sam puffs up with mock outrage. “Why do I even put up with your white ass,” he says, waving Steve off and marching into the next room.

“So that’s how it is, huh?” Steve calls out after him, grinning like a fiend.

“You’re damn right that’s how it is!”

======  
===

The morning after midterms, a cough settles in Steve's lungs. He wakes in the morning and hacks until globules of dead nannites plop into the sink, mixed with just enough motor oil to get him concerned. He settles down on the couch to run a deep diagnostic.

 _Virus_ , the verdict states. Steve sighs and flops back on the couch. He opens his antivirus suite and passes out.

Three hours later he wakes to the noise of Bucky thrashing about in the kitchen. There's a godawful clang, and Steve just makes out a quiet "fuck" over the sound of the faucet running.

"You’re supposed to put the pot on the stove, not back in the sink."

"Yes, thank you, Nat, I wasn't sure about that part." Water, hissing against metal.

"Oh, by the way, Mr. Ramaji called you back about the Sutton gig."

"Yeah?"

"He said, and I quote, 'Our company could benefit from the insight of a consultant of your caliber.'"

"Mmph."

"It's good money, James."

"Yeah, and it comes with a complimentary headache."

"Shall I call Mr. Ramaji back?"

"I don't care, Nat, I really don't." There's the click- _whoomp_ of the stove lighting, and a scrape as Bucky puts the pot over the burner.

"I’ll tell him I've led the horse to water, but he's still making up his mind."

"You do that."

Steve rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Another two hours go by and he's woken by Bucky's hand brushing against his forehead. "You feeling alright, Stevie?"

"Got a bug.”

"Like a code bug, or an infectious bug?"

"Virus."

"Ah. You need anything?"

"Water," Steve replies. "Need to top off my coolant."

"Sure thing." He fades into the background as Steve refocuses on his antivirus software. _Huh_. The code is attacking the software governing his body, rather than his higher programming. He's running on a higher cycle to compensate, and to recharge his nannites as fast as he can, and all told, it would be easier if he didn't have to operate on compatibility mode to interface with his hardware. He lets out a reedy sigh.

"There you go, buddy. Lemme know if you need anything else."

"Thanks." Steve props himself up and gulps down the water before burying his face back in the pillow.

The next day is no better. Steve only parts himself from his immune system long enough to send an apologetic email to his professor. He watches the progress of the virus: he caught it from a foolish torrent, and while he has long since deleted the file and destroyed all remains of its path, the virus remains, creeping through his body. His joints ache abominably.

Why on earth someone would design a computer virus to mimic the symptoms of the ‘flu, Steve will never know.

When his fever spikes close to his body's terminus, Natasha speaks. "Hey, Steve."

He grunts. "Yeah?"

"Mind if I run a scan on you?"

"Go ahead."

Steve lays on the couch and lets her scanners do their work. There's no light or sound, or any indication that she's working; she's a sleek, high-powered program, after all, the sign of Bucky's handiwork. Her face wavers into view on the screen. "Hate to say it, baby 'bot, but you should really get that looked at. It's not just attacking your body, it's targeting your nannites."

Steve sighs, and the buildup in his lungs rattles.

"James, Steve is really sick. He needs a mechanic."

"I'm fine," Steve protests. He starts to cough.

"Yes, and I'm Anonymous," Natasha retorts. "Come on, Steve, you're trying to put your insides on your outsides."

"Just need a little time to rest, is all," he mumbles. He hears the creak of the ladder, and the soft pad of Bucky's feet, until his face peers over the couch. His face is pinched and pale.

"You're not bullshitting us, are you Steve?" He reaches down to brush against Steve's cheek, and Steve leans into his touch.

"Nah, I'm peachy. Just gotta—" he coughs, "—give it some more time."

"Uh-huh. Did you want a blanket or something?"

"No. I'm overheating as it is."

Bucky strokes his hair. "Maybe you could try taking a cold shower."

"That's... a wonderful idea. Help me up."

Steve tries, he really does. But his legs are wobbly and his reactor doesn't have the juice to spare for locomotion. He leans against Bucky and does his best to tamp down his embarrassment. Bucky walks him over to the bathroom and levers him down on the toilet. "Think you can manage from here?"

"I, uh." Steve's hands tremble as he plucks at his shirt. He gets it up around his shoulders before he has to stop, winded. "I might need help."

"No problem." Bucky pulls his own shirt off—Steve glances away from his bare chest to give him some modicum of privacy, and Bucky snorts. "You can look, buddy. Nothing you haven't seen already."

"Don't need me staring at you," Steve mutters.

Bucky's hands—both his hands—are cool against Steve's fevered skin. "Steve," he says. "We've been lovers for a couple months, now. You can look."

Steve closes his eyes and nods, too tired to argue. He hears the shuff of cloth as Bucky shucks the rest of his clothes, then the tug at his belt as he starts to undress him, as well. The shower rushes on.

"Alright, pal, let's cool you down." Bucky hauls Steve up by the armpits and walks him back into the shower. "Fuck, that's cold!"

The water is a neat forty degrees, and Steve groans as it beats between his shoulder blades. He lets his forehead loll against Bucky's collarbones. Bucky's hands come up, pouring water over his head, soaking it through his hair; he runs his hands down Steve's arms and up his back. He's shivering, Steve realizes. He can feel the goosebumps rising along Bucky's arms.

"You ready to turn around?" Bucky asks.

"Please." The word comes out slurred, and Bucky huffs a soft laugh in his ear.

"Alright, gonna move you around now. I won't let you fall."

Steve loses track of time under the spray. His reactor cycles down, and his breathing comes easier, and his skin settles back to its normal baseline temperature. He watches his immune system beat the virus back a little more. He sighs and rests his head against Bucky's shoulder.

He's woken from his torpor when Bucky shifts, and his erection presses against Steve's back. "Shit," Bucky says, jerking his hips back. "I didn't mean to, sorry."

"Do you...?"

"Not really, no. It's just, you're warm, and the water's—well, it's less cold, now, and it just... happened."

"Okay."

They linger a little longer, until Steve finally starts to wake up. He tilts his head forward. "M'good."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

Bucky lets go of Steve's waist and switches off the water.

"How long were we under?"

"'Bout twenty minutes."

"Sorry for the waste."

Bucky brushes his sodden hair back from his forehead. "You feeling better?"

"A bit."

"Then it wasn't a waste."

Bucky walks them back out of the shower, and Steve gives him a wry smile at his reluctance to let him go. "Think I can stand up on my own, now.”

"Don't want you to turf it in here," Bucky replies, dead serious. "Not a lot a give with porcelain." He wraps Steve in a towel and presses a kiss to his temple.

"Worrywart," Steve mutters, swaying on his feet.

"Born and bred." Bucky squeezes the water out of his hair and wraps the towel around his waist. "Let’s get you back in your rack, huh?"

"'Kay."

Bucky leads him back to the living room and arranges him on the couch. "Want clothes?"

"Too hot."

"Let me know if you need anything, alright?"

"Yeah." Steve pulls up the sheet and curls into a ball. Sleep rolls over him, and he hears, just before he passes out, Bucky say to Natasha: "I'll take the Sutton job."


	7. Chapter 7

The next day, Steve takes a turn for the worse. Bucky hovers by his side the entire morning, until Steve starts coughing so hard he has to run to the sink to vomit up gray, nannite-filled gel.

"That's it," Bucky says softly. "That's it, Stevie. We're gonna back you up, and then I'm calling a mechanic, because I'm not gonna watch you stubborn your way through this any longer."

Steve doesn't answer.

"Nat, you reckon we can quarantine the disk image?"

"Easily. It's a pretty basic bug; his software's handling it just fine, but his body's taking the hits."

"Fuck." Steve hears Bucky run his hands through his hair. "I should have forked over the extra money."

"What's done is done," Natasha says. "It's not your fault someone coded a virus that slipped through the cracks."

"Okay. Nat, I need to get him up and dressed. Can you look for a place?"

"On it."

Steve is vaguely aware of Bucky hauling him upright, and of getting manhandled into jeans and a sweatshirt. He watches dully as Bucky ties his shoes.

"Got a place," Nat says. "Franklin Square and Philadelphia, it's called Ad Astra Choppers. Says they specialize in bikes, but they do 'bots on the side."

"Great. Thanks, Nat." Bucky wraps Steve's arm over his shoulders. "Alley-oop."

Steve sways against him and buries his face in his chest.

"Steve, you're gonna have to walk yourself, I can't carry you all the way."

"Light hurts."

"...Oh, that's not good," Natasha breathes.

Bucky's silent for a while, his arms steady around Steve's back.

"Nat," he says softly. "Call Becca."

"Are you sure that's—"

"Nat. Do it."

She puts it on speakerphone. The sound of ringing fills the small apartment. Finally, the call connects.

"Bucky?" A woman's voice. Somewhere between... 180 and... Steve gives up. His hearing is starting to waver in and out, anyway.

"Hey, Becca."

There's a long pause. "Why are you calling me."

"I need help, Becks."

"If you want more money—"

"It's not money," Bucky snaps. "I need a ride, okay? Steve's sick and I need to get him to a garage."

"I'm not taking your sex toy anywhere, James Buchanan Barnes, do you hear me?"

Bucky starts to swear, but Natasha cuts him off. "James. Stop before you make it worse."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Natasha. I'm your brother's home computer."

"Our grandmother's name was Natalia."

"I'm aware. I want to clarify one thing about Bucky and Steve's relationship, if you don't mind."

Rebecca remains silent.

"Steve is a learning 'bot, Mrs. Couvert. In licensing, Bucky specified very few things about his programming, and in fact encouraged him to pick the majority of it himself. He's a true AI, not a toy."

More silence. Steve can feel how tense Bucky's breathing is.

"Allow me to demonstrate. How're you feeling, baby 'bot?"

"Fuck you, Nat," Steve says without heat. "Don't call me that."

"Can you describe the room to us?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Eyes are closed."

"Can you open them?"

"No." Bucky's hands are brushing through his hair; he's not raising his head to humor Bucky's dick of a sister.

"He's not feeling very up to company, today, I'm afraid. He recently caught a rather severe virus."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"So you understand that your brother is not concerned about his dildo, but about his friend."

There's another beat of silence.

"Steve?" Rebecca's voice.

He sighs. "Yeah."

"Why did Bucky buy you?"

"Ask him yourself."

"He won't tell me."

"Fuck you, Rebecca—"

Natasha cuts him off, again. "James."

Bucky shuts up. Steve can feel the anger vibrating through him all the same, in the clench of his fingers against Steve's back. Steve swallows back the urge to vomit. "He did tell you, Mrs. Couvert. It just wasn't the answer you wanted to hear."

Her hesitation is heavy in the air. "He should be relying on his family, not a robot."

"Yeah, well, maybe you shouldn't have called him a pervert, if that's what you wanted."

"You—you heard that?"

"He told me. Subtle difference, I know."

He hears the sound of her clearing her throat. "I can be over in twenty minutes."

Bucky swallows. "Thanks, Becca. I owe you one." The words sound ground out. Steve buries his face in his chest as the call disconnects. Bucky's fingers gentle their grip, and he rubs the back of Steve's neck.

"Twenty minutes is probably enough to get you backed up," he says. "Think you can manage the ladder?"

Steve's stomach roils just at the thought. "Definitely not."

"Alright, then." He walks Steve around the couch and settles him at the base of the ladder. "Can you upload files online, still?"

"I wouldn't recommend him trying," Natasha answers for him. "It'd probably corrupt on the way over."

"Is that right, Steve?" Steve gives a loose nod. "Shit. Okay, we're gonna have to do this the old fashioned way. Nat, do I still have the—"

"Yes, in the second dongle box."

"Wow, really? I could've sworn I'd tossed it."

"You were going to. I changed your mind."

"Good call." He squeezes Steve's shoulder. "Wait here, buddy, okay?"

"Not going anywhere." He hears Bucky scurry up the steps and start tearing his loft apart.

"Nat, it's not—I can't find it—"

"The second dongle box, you idiot—"

"This _is_ the second dongle box!"

"Well, then it's the third. How many dongles do you even need, Barnes?"

"Just one, goddamn it! And it's—oh, thank fuck." There's a muffled click, a long stretch of typing set to the tune of Bucky's muttering, and then Bucky is coming back downstairs, followed by the slither of heavy cable spooling out behind him.

"Okay, buddy, I'm gonna have to crack open your ports."

Steve slumps forward over his lap, baring the back of his neck. "Do it."

There's a port there, where on a human would project the seventh cervical vertebra. Steve has never seen it, though he has brushed against it, and Bucky has a habit of toying with it as they lay in bed. He feels the jack slipping in, and he twitches when the connection is made.

"You can still do this, right?" Bucky asks. "Please tell me it hasn't gotten to your disk utility, yet."

"We're good." He networks with the mainframe and pauses. "You named your server Зимний Солдат?"

Steve's eyesight might be blurring from photosensitivity, but he's pretty sure Bucky's blushing.

"My grandmother was Russian, alright? It was a joke in my platoon."

"You're a nerd."

"Your face is a nerd. Get copying."

Creating a disk image is boring as hell. It takes up a fair chunk of his processing capability, so he's only able to follow one data stream at a time—which, for a 'bot like Steve, is, quite simply, boring as hell. Now, however, he's too tired to care. He slumps against Bucky's shoulder and counts down the minutes.

Twenty three minutes trudge past, and Steve is ninety-eight percent done with the file transfer, when there's a knock on Bucky's door. He lets out a small whine when Bucky gets up to answer it.

"Shh," Bucky says. He's radiating nerves.

Steve grunts. "She better be nice to you."

He hears Bucky's smile in his voice. "Yeah? Or what?"

"I'll barf nannite sludge on her."

"You know, that's actually comforting." Bucky's feet move toward the door. He pulls away the security chain and presses his thumb against the scanner. The deadbolt releases.

"Hey, Becca." He sounds subdued. Nervous. Steve bets nine to one odds that he's not making eye contact.

"Bucky."

"Um. Come in."

Steve hears the hollow clack of heels over the floorboards. "So this is where you've hidden yourself. It's awfully dark."

"It's got a good uplink." There's a shift of clothing, and the robotic whir of Bucky's arm. He's running his hand through his hair.

"For God's sake, why don't you cover that unsightly arm?"

No. That's not going to fly, not in front of Steve. "Why don't you shut your unsightly mouth?" he snaps. He hears her spin around—fabric swishes out, she must be wearing a long coat or a skirt. Her gaze is a palpable thing. For the sake of first impressions, he cracks his eyelids and glares back.

Bucky's sister is a tall, slender woman, dark of hair and eye, approximately five years older than her brother, and impeccably dressed. A showy rock stands out on her finger. Steve checks against what he knows of Bucky's background—working class, abusive father—and he thinks he has the measure of Rebecca Barnes.

"You must be Steve," she says, her voice dripping with disdain. Her eyes linger on the jack in his neck, and follow the cord up the ladder to the loft.

"I'd say it was a pleasure," Steve says, "but my programming doesn't like it when I lie."

Her lip curls like she's smelling fresh dog shit right under her nose. "Nor did it seem to grace you with manners."

He glares through his bleary vision. "Don't see the point, when the person I'm talking to doesn't have 'em, either."

Rebecca scowls at Bucky. "Well, he certainly has personality."

Bucky stands mute in the kitchen, holding his prosthesis in his right hand. Steve sighs. "Bucky," he says. "Could you unhook me? The back-up's done."

He pads around his sister and kneels by Steve's side. When he pulls the jack out, he doesn't touch Steve at all. He moves to help Steve stand, but Steve waves him away, conscious of Becca's eyes on him. "I can do this." He's bemused by the change in Bucky; on the phone, he was angry and forceful; now, he is meek, folded in on himself. He watches in silence as Steve hauls himself up by the rungs on the ladder. Steve grits his teeth and takes a step—and the floor rushes up to him in a streaky blur.

Bucky's arms catch him. "I've got you," he murmurs. Steve glances to his sister; Rebecca is watching them with poorly concealed impatience.

"Late for a society meeting, or something?" he snaps.

"Steve," Bucky says.

"What, afraid she'll think less of us? I can take that."

Rebecca's face has gone mottled with anger. "How dare—" she cuts herself off. "I suppose you think you're clever."

"I'm a supercomputer," Steve says, swaying into Bucky's grip. "I can think circles around you, offense absolutely intended."

"Honestly, Yasha, why did you program this?"

"I didn't—can we just pretend to be civil?" Bucky asks plaintively. Steve feels a flicker of shame. He won't apologize, but he'll lay off. For Bucky's sake.

The only hitch comes when they move to the door. Bucky reaches for his coat, and Rebecca keeps walking.

"Wait up," Bucky says.

She turns, a dark, puzzled look on her face. "I don't have a great deal of time for lingering goodbyes."

Bucky's face is set. "I'm coming with you."

"C'mon, Buck, you don't have—"

"Shut up, Steve. I'm not staying here like a bump on a log."

The look Rebecca gives Steve is nothing short of poisonous. She masks it quickly. "When was the last time you were out of the house, Bucky? It's a beautiful day."

"It's sunny," Bucky says.

"Yes, as I said. A beautiful day."

Bucky's lips thin. Steve leans into his shoulder and tucks his fingers into his belt loops, and they move out the door to the stairwell, led by Rebecca and moving in an awkward, three-legged gait. Steve keeps his mouth shut, as Bucky asked—just in time to catch a face-full of the sunlight streaming in through the front doors. He yelps and hides his face in Bucky's shoulder.

"It's remarkably good at simulating pain," Rebecca comments.

"Don't call him—"

"I'm good at it because it fucking hurts, ma'am," Steve grits out. "And don't call me 'it,' or I will start calling you 'he.'"

Bucky makes a small, choked noise. Steve squeezes his eyes shut and lets Bucky lead him. He sighs. One day, he will be outside with Bucky without any complications, and it will be fucking wonderful.

Bucky nudges him into a car idling by the curb. The scent of leather and wool rise from within, with a faint hint of expensive perfume. Steve's hands slide over the slick seats. Bucky steadies him, and then he's there, pressed against him, his body blessedly cool through Steve's fever. He hears Rebecca sit opposite them.

"Could... Does the car have tinting?" Bucky asks.

Rebecca doesn't reply, but Steve hears the muted beep of buttons, and the light dims. He feels Bucky relax beside him. Steve opens his eyes to look around.

The car is clearly a luxury accessory. Fine-grained leather seats, wool carpeting, the picture of understated wealth—right down to the self-driving mechanism separating the front console from the passenger cab in the back. Rebecca watches Bucky card his fingers through Steve's hair, a curl to her carefully painted upper lip.

"Don't try to tell me you're not in love with—him," she says.

Bucky shrugs his shoulder. "Does it matter?"

"Baba would have wanted great-grandchildren, Yasha, not... this. She would have wanted you to carry on the family name."

"Because she was so attached to 'Barnes.'"

"She loved Papa," she says softly, and Bucky turns away. "And—and she loved George—"

"Don't go there," Bucky says. "Don't even go there, Rebecca."

"Fine. When are you going to tell _Styopa_ about your childhood?"

"Steve already knows," Steve says.

Rebecca's eyes are dark. "Do you."

"I know enough." Beside him, Bucky has gone tense again, stiff and unyielding to his touch. Steve levers himself upright 'til he's leaning back against the seat. He watches Rebecca Barnes.

"Why do you dislike androids?" he asks.

Her nostrils flare. "I don't dislike androids."

"Do better."

"Androids have their place," she says, her eyes flashing. "But your kind have already caused my brother enough heartache."

"It wasn't the androids who broke my feet, Rivka."

"They certainly failed to protect you!"

"I was their sergeant!" Bucky snaps. "I gave the orders, not them! What, you think I should have sacrificed them to save my own ass? Fuck no!"

Steve puts a hand on his arm. He turns to Rebecca. "How about we don't talk at all for the rest of the trip." His vision swims.

Rebecca waves a dismissive hand and stares out the window. Steve sighs and sags back into the seats. His head is splitting. He checks his scanner: the virus is at a standstill, but he can tell his system will need reinforcements soon. He fumbles for Bucky's hand.

Bucky squeezes his fingers, but he won't look at Steve, and the silence weighs heavy. Steve traces the jointwork in Bucky's hand and waits.

Rebecca leaves them at the garage, claiming she has a board meeting she is putting off for Bucky's convenience. Steve reins Bucky back.

"Do you honestly want her to stick around?" he asks.

Bucky doesn't answer, but his eyes—Steve sighs. He's too sick to deal with family drama.

"C'mon, let's check in."

======  
===

The garage is a cluttered mess. The main desk is piled with paperwork, and the back bench, visible through the glass doors, is a riot of mechanical debris. It's an old building, refurbished to shining, retro gleam, and while the non-work areas are a disaster, the pits themselves are spotless.

"Welcome to Ad Astra!" the secretary says, and Steve blinks when he realizes the curvy brunette behind the counter doodling flowers across an invoice is a 'bot.

"Yeah, we have an appointment under 'Barnes'?" Bucky says.

The 'bot flips through a surprisingly organized datebook. "Ooh, the virus scan," she says. She casts an eye to Steve. "Not gonna lie, you look kind of like roadkill."

"Wait 'til you see what I puke up," Steve answers with a wobbly smile.

"Okay, for the record? That's nasty. You stay over there. Jane, we've got a virus!"

There's a clatter from a back room, and muffled cursing, and then a tiny woman tumbles down the hall, all nervous energy and grease stains. "I thought that wasn't until four," she says.

"Hon, it's 3:58."

"Oh, wow. Did I eat lunch?"

"Nope."

"Shit. I mean—" she stares wide-eyed at Bucky and Steve. "I mean rats, hi, I'm Jane Foster, I'm the owner."

"Bucky Barnes," Bucky says, taking her outstretched hand. "This is Steve."

"Hi, Steve," Jane says. "So I hear we've got a virus?"

"Yeah. I mean, yes ma'am."

Jane wrinkles her nose. "Don't say that, that makes me feel old."

Steve eyes the diplomas on the wall behind the counter. "How about Doc?"

"I think we can swing that. Come on down, the exam room is this way."

The exam room is a back office, converted to cater to a 'bot's mechanical needs. Jane pats the bench. "Hop on up and I'll strap you in. Do you have internet?"

"Not sure," Steve says as Bucky helps him onto the table. "Couldn't figure out how it spread, so I've been keeping to myself."

"That's not so good," Jane says. "How bad of a virus are we talking about, here?"

"It's a file infector, it's made hash of the connections between my hardware and my software."

"Hmm. Describe your symptoms."

"Losing voluntary control over my functions the farther the virus spreads. Basal readings all took a ten percent hike—I've been running a fever for about five days, now, currently I'm averaging 98.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Reactor output two times normal just to get half the work done. My programming's sending out screaming signals to my body, but there's nothing wrong with it, so my nannites are attacking nothing. I've been puking nannite sludge for the past twenty-four hours, and it just started jacking up my sensory inputs. Photophobia, partial deafness, muscle weakness." He sags into himself. "Getting kind of hard to breathe, with the build-up in my lungs, too."

Jane whistles. "That's a laundry list," she says. She gives Bucky a narrow-eyed look. "Why didn't you bring him in earlier?"

"He wouldn't let me," Bucky says. "He's a stubborn idiot when he wants."

Jane's gaze softens. "We all are, every now and then. Alright, Steve, I'm going to wire you up, and we'll see what we can do about this virus. Do you have any bits of code you can give me, so we can figure which it is?"

Steve rattles off character strings, and Jane searches them. "Okay, looks like you've got the Gerbull virus. Do you want the good news or the bad news?"

"Just spit it out."

"Good news: I can get it out, and update your patches so you won't get it again. Bad news: I can't undo what's already been done. I mean, I can top off your nannites, and clear out the fluid in your lungs and stabilize the crosslinks, but I won't be able to reverse the tissue damage."

"So the hearing and muscle loss is going to stick," Steve sighs.

Jane gives him a sympathetic look. "You'll still be well above human baselines."

"Yeah." He squeezes Bucky's hand. "Let's do it."

Jane loads the anti-virus program—industrial strength, nearly as complex as Steve himself, is—and she holds up the jack. "Did you want to do this, yourself?"

Steve swallows. "Could Bucky do it?" Beside him, Bucky twitches.

"Sure, not a problem. This generally works better when you're comfortable, so if having your user makes it easier..."

"Please."

She hands the jack over, and Bucky takes it with trembling hands. "Warn a guy, Steve," he mutters, but his hand is blessedly cool on his overheated skin, and his touch is gentle as he bares the port on the back of Steve's neck. Steve leans in to him as the connection sparks into life. The exam room fades around him.

"Remember," Jane says, "the AI will walk you through the procedure. Let it do its work."

The outer world dissolves, and Steve retreats into his mind's eye.

He looks, and he sees the twilit vista of his hibernating mind. He hovers above it, detached. It’s beautiful. All seems at peace, here, though he knows this is not truly the case.

A presence materializes beside him, not as fully fleshed as he is, but with a mischievous bent that makes Steve curious.

_Who are you?_

_Casey Systems Anti-Virus Suite, Unit 87-12548663,_ it replies.

_Mind if I call you Casey?_

_Feel free. You are suffering from the Gerbull virus?_

_That's right._

Steve feels a gentle tug, and his... awareness is pulled along after Casey. _The Gerbull virus affects the interface complex,_ it says. _This way._

Casey drags them over to a tangled web of microchips and processors. They hover for a moment, and Steve marvels at the hum of activity before Casey shifts them forward and into the chips themselves. They mingle amidst the electrons, the swirling pulses of electricity flowing through Steve's body. _This way._

The current draws them through a highway of signals, a million binary impulses ticking down the functions of Steve's verisimilitude protocols, until they are swept into the hulking mass of his hard drive. They're below the motherboard, now, tucked between the lobes of his lungs. Binary flickers like heat lightning on a summer night— _on off on on on off_ —

 _This way,_ Casey says, and pulls them toward Steve's program files. The electrons shrink until they vanish altogether, replaced by ones and zeros. The compiler looms ahead. They pass through into a spiraling vortex of information that sends Steve dizzy until Casey steadies him. _Here,_ it says. Strings of code wrap around them, a gentle blue vortex against the infinite dark. Casey pauses. _Why is it on compatibility mode?_

 _My hardware is from an earlier generation,_ Steve answers.

_Too early for your operating system._

Steve gives a mental shrug. _Needs must._

_It will make it harder._

_Can it still be done?_

_Yes._ Casey spins up through the gentle tornado of code curling around them, and sends out—the best way Steve can describe them are feelers—of code of its own, grafting them to Steve's and encouraging them to take root. They spread through the vortex, coiling up and through like vines, and every time they find aberrant code they burn it out. Steve watches for seconds, for eons, as Casey attacks the virus. The longer it works, the more new tendrils unfurl to join it: blue, stretched thin and slow—Steve's own anti-virus software, less robust and more strained than Casey's focused programming. Whenever the tendrils touch they fuse together, becoming stronger. They root out the virus faster, for Steve knows what should and should not be, and Casey knows the best way to fight back.

Gerbull does not give up easily. It has its claws deep in Steve's files, stashed down obscure paths it has no business being in. It seems to have mutated upon contact into a boot virus, and Casey lets out an electronic war cry as it drags it out of its hideaways and scours it from Steve's code. Steve senses Casey's feral thrill of glee, and he watches, awestruck, at the brutal efficiency of its hunt.

Finally, the twining vines are woven throughout the entirety of Steve's code, reaching all parts of his psyche. He feels full—stretched in an oddly non-physical way. The vines pulse slowly in time with his reactor cycle. Casey settles down by his side once more.

 _Gerbull is dead,_ it says. _We shall return._

With no more ceremony than that, the vines disappear, and Steve is drawn back through the compiler in a whirl of darkness. They pass through the brilliant flash of the electrons, then they are swooping back and above, to hover once more over the plane of Steve's motherboard.

 _Thank you for using Casey Systems,_ Casey says, and vanishes. Steve comes to in the exam room, Bucky's hands warm once more against his skin. He blinks.

"Steve," Jane says. "How are you feeling?"

"Stoned," he replies with a groan. He curls on his side, around the twist of nausea in his belly.

"Oops!" An emesis basin appears just in time to catch the stream of dead nannites Steve wretches up.

"That's actually a very common reaction to the anti-virus," Jane says. "It's powerful, but not always easy on the systems."

Steve grunts. "Buck?"

"I'm here."

"S'good. Okay, Doc, what's next?"

"Well, I really want to give you a nannite booster," Jane says, putting the basin aside. "You say you've been puking for the past day?"

"Yeah."

"Then yeah, you really need more nannites. Also, when you get a chance, do a full systems check. The new nannites might repair some of the damage, but you're still going to have to establish a new baseline."

"'Kay."

Steve lays on the exam bench and lets himself drift while Jane and Bucky talk finances.

For the first time since midterms, his mind is empty.

"—give you a ride," Jane is saying when Bucky shakes him awake.

"C'mon, buddy, time to go," Bucky says. Then, to Jane, "We'd like that, thanks."

He falls asleep in the car.


	8. Chapter 8

"—remember, your essays are due the week after break. The TAs will be stationed by the doors to collect them as you come in. See you in two weeks."

All around, the sound of desks creaking and voices rising; text alerts flash through skintech as the auditorium lights raise. Steve shoves his notebook and tablet back in his bag, capping his pen with his teeth. He's gotten more than a few laughs at his use of hardcopy, but then he shows them his calligraphy, and they shut up. If they don't, he's willing to show them just how scrappy a 'bot can get.

Most people don't care. It's Friday, and the first weekend of spring break; they have more important things on their minds than the throwback quirks of one 'bot.

"See you in a week, then," Peggy says, holding out her hand.

"Yeah, you too," Steve says, shaking it. Peggy Martinelli is another 'bot, the only other 'bot taking this section of college English, and they bonded within the first week over the unconscionably slow pace of human learning. They take turns spotting each other when they tune out and escape to the Web.

They rise as one and file between the desks to the doors, mingling with the swarm as they lurch into the late afternoon sunshine. He follows Peggy to the bike rack. Peggy has an absolutely beautiful refurbished Dutch bike, built like a tank and painted canary yellow. She bends down to unlock the rear wheel.

"Any plans for break?" Steve asks. He smiles slyly. "Gonna cram your paper in next Saturday?"

Peggy snorts. "I had it written the day after Samson assigned it. No, I'm going to the shooting range to give my user's Remington some much-needed attention. You?"

They start across campus, Peggy leading her bike and Steve keeping her company. "Think Bucky's got a hardware commission, so I'll probably be helping him out with that."

Peggy gives him a small smile. "You're one of the lucky ones. Your user respects your mind."

"Wait,” Steve says, pulling up short. “Have you been having trouble with Angie?"

Peggy rolls her eyes. "Oh heavens, the social justice warrior rears his head. Do you need help checking Craiglist for armor and a white steed?"

He can feel himself flushing. "No, I just—"

"We're _fine_ ," Peggy says. "Angie's been hinting for weeks about taking the guns on a field trip. I'm one of the lucky ones, too, I promise."

"But a lot of 'bots aren't." It's familiar, now, how Steve finds himself raising his chin and firming his jaw.

Peggy sighs. "Steve, you must understand: 'bots aren't people. I support the rights movement as much as the next AI, but 'bots literally were not created equal. I'm not saying that shouldn't change—but we _are_ different. The fight for 'bot rights won't be the same. It's going to be much harder."

She puts her hand on his elbow. "What I'm trying to say is, don't let your urgency burn you out."

"Yeah." Steve huffs out a sigh. "Yeah, you're right."

"Of course I am," Peggy says. "I'm a psychology major."

The conversation lags as they reach the edge of campus. Steve perks up—he can see Bucky's familiar, hunched figure across the street, strategically placed beneath a deli awning. "See you later, Peggy," he tosses out before dodging traffic.

Bucky has straightened by the time he gets to him, his hands tucked in his pockets. "You know I hate it when you do that," he says, and Steve smiles sunnily at him.

"I can calculate the cars' acceleration to the second," he says, reaching up to flick at the brim of Bucky's ball cap. "Not gonna turn into a smear on the pavement, Bucky, I promise."

Bucky bends down and kisses him gently, his hand slipping warm against Steve's waist for a heartbeat before it vanishes and Steve's left shivering. "Still gives me the collywobbles," he says with a wry grin.

 _Collywobbles_ , Steve mouths at him.

 _Fuck you_ , Bucky mouths back, and grabs Steve's hand as he turns toward home. "Hold up, gotta swing by Ulysses."

Steve slows. "The commission?"

Bucky gives him an apologetic glance. "Yep."

He makes a show of thinking about it, just to watch Bucky shake his head in fond exasperation. "I s'pose we can do that."

"Thanks," Bucky replies drily. He tugs Steve over and wraps his arm over his shoulders. Bucky's wearing a t-shirt and shorts ("it's still in the forties, you idiot—" "Shut up, it's spring, I'm wearing what I want"), and Steve tucks himself in close to his side.

"How long were you waiting for me?" he asks.

Bucky rolls his eyes. Steve knows it happens, even though he's looking down at their feet pounding pavement in step. "I'm a hopeless mess, Stevie," he says, utterly deadpan. "Take me home, I can't handle it all."

"Oh, good. Then I can—"

Bucky hunches off the side before Steve even moves, protecting his vulnerable ticklish spots. "Don't you dare," he says.

Steve blinks at him, all innocence. "I was going to make you carry my backpack, Bucky. What did you think I was going to do?"

"You're a menace," Bucky mutters, tucking him back under his arm. Steve smirks into his chest.

Bucky clears his throat. “So, Nat and I were wondering, seeing as how you're a big bad college grad, now, what you wanted to do for your grad party."

 _Oh, no_. "My what?"

Bucky's voice is sly. "Your graduation party. You know. To celebrate your graduation. You fast-tracked it, Steve. Two years, with honors? That deserves a fucking party."

"Since when?"

"Since the dawn of post-secondary education, Steve, get with the times." Ulysses' Tech Hut is across the street. Bucky steps off the curb, his grin widening when he sees Steve's deer-in-the-headlights look of panic. "You mean you don't want to go to your own graduation party?"

"I'm a 'bot," Steve says desperately. "I don't need a party."

"But we spent so long on it," Bucky says, faking a pout.

"Bucky..."

"No, you're not getting out of this," Bucky laughs, pointing at him. "No matter much how you beg or plead, you hear me, Steve?"

Steve scowls and opens his mouth— _Roger, loud and clear_ —but then he sees the bus out of the corner of his eye, and time slows.

It's a city bus, bumping along the road. AI driver, express route through downtown, going fast. He thinks he says something, feels his mouth move in the familiar shape of Bucky's name, but he can't look away from the oncoming bus. In his peripheral vision he sees Bucky straighten, frowning; he sees a woman just in front of him gasp in horror. The singing hum of Steve's reactor drowns out all sound. He doesn't stop to think, he just lunges forward, grabs Bucky's shirt in his fists, and swings against his weight to throw him back toward the sidewalk. He turns to look—

—squealing brakes—

The world tumbles around him. His head whips around on his neck; he thinks he hits the windshield. His leg collides with something unforgiving and the joint in his knee gives. Asphalt, tearing through his shirts and pants—his skin—popping sounds, like snapping twigs—

_It hurts oh god_

He hears a high-pitched whine, raising the hairs on the back of Steve's neck. His motherboard is hot in his chest. He drags in a breath to cool it, but it's—it's not working right—

One of his eyes is crushed. Steve watches as his tears spread along the pavement. A trail of oil from his lips drops into the puddle, staining it with yellow-brown swirls. His processor is trying to save everything it can, but it comes in fits and starts; he gets a snapshot, then a few seconds of moving footage. He recognizes Bucky's voice:

"—embody get hel—"

"Don't you f—die o—me, Stevie—"

"Ste—"

He rolls his good eye down and sees Bucky’s face: drawn with horror, eyes damp. Steve tries to reach out and brush the hair out of the way, but his muscles aren't coordinating properly. Static and screaming wires fuzz his thoughts.

_It's okay, Buck_

His vox array lets out a low grind, maxing out his speakers with an electronic burp.

"—talk, don't need—"

Bucky's profile, he's yelling—

"The fuck is—ith you!"

 _I'm sorry_ , Steve thinks.

"—ee—e was there?"

Hands on his chest—

"—are you alrrrght?"

A woman is pulling Bucky away—

"—bout me! Take c-c-c-care of hi—"

"—plea—"

"—st—vie—"

"—no—"

======  
===

A-OS HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM. RECOMMEND RESTARTING YOUR DEVICE.

click

ACTION FAILED. A-OS HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM. RECOMMEND RESTARTING YOUR DEVICE.

click

ACTION FAILED. A-OS HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM. RECOMMEND RESTARTING YOUR DEVICE.

click

ACTION FAILED. A-OS HAS ENCOUNTERED AN ERROR. RECOMMEND RESTARTING YOUR DEVICE.

======  
===

_It has been summarily proven through these testimonies that artificial intelligences are another life form, and as much humanity's children as those of our flesh—albeit from a separate line of descent. As humans have our mitochondrial Eve, so do AIs have their binary Adam. The question is not whether we can make room for them, as it is clear we already have, but whether we can share this Garden we call Earth._

_If that is the goal, then we are falling far short. AIs are treated as the slaves in the Americas were treated: subhuman, only valuable for their labor. They are treated as women have so long been treated: as objects, as sex toys and commodities and consolation prizes. They are treated as the disabled are treated: their plight is made invisible. And when they love outside the bounds of social expectation, those who love them back are decried as deviants. 'Bots are treated as non-sentients, because they can be made that way._

_There is another road we might take, one that leads away from hate and marginalization. No one can predict what this road with look like, but it will be difficult. On this road, humans and 'bots will stand side-by-side as equals, and share the difficulties of it together. On this road, 'bots will not be thrown aside when their hardware breaks down, leaving their perfect minds to count down the years in a landfill while their chassis rots around them. On this road, human children will not be taught to see inorganic sentience as lesser, but rather a new and vibrant form of being, much the way we have learned to accept new and equally vibrant peoples and lifestyles._

_On this road, perhaps 'humanity' will come to mean more than just 'human beings,' but grow to encompass an ideal: those who treat others humanely, as fellow sentients. We call them human rights; it is clear this term is no longer enough. The time has come to begin the Constitutional defense of sentient rights._

_It is therefore the majority opinion of this court that artificial intelligences, regardless of form or function, should be given the right to claim sentience, having proven no coercion and being of sound mind. This entitles them to all the privileges a human is allowed, including citizenship, the right to vote, and receiving an inheritance. It is so decided._

—Barnes vs. Couvert. 701 U.S. 477. Supreme Court of the United States. 2065. Rpt. in _Android Rights Bulletin_. Ed. 01010001, James Barnes, and Spinner. New York: 2064. 6-9. Print.

======  
===

Sunlight. 73 lumens, from an angle of 32º off the perpendicular plane. His optical fibers strain against the load. It is uncomfortable. He lowers his filters and contracts his pupils, then checks his chronometer.

 _Three months_ —

Steve's eyes snap open. He is on a table dressed in manufacturer's scrubs. A bank of windows shows the sun as it hovers behind an unfamiliar skyline; on the other side, a laboratory-cum-garage. His reactor spins up with nerves. He sits up.

"Where am I?"

A clatter behind the exposed engine of an obsolete roadster draws his attention, and a dark-haired man—a boy, really—jumps to his feet.

"You're awake!" He tosses a socket wrench onto the table without looking. "I mean, I knew you would, I programmed the boot sequence myself, but still—" he vaults over a gear-strewn couch and squints in Steve's face. "How are you feeling?"

"I—are you Tony Stark?"

The kid crows. "He knows me! Ha! He knows his daddy!" He leans back into Steve's personal space. "What's your name?"

"Steve," Steve says, utterly bewildered. "Where's Bucky?"

Tony waves his hands. "Who knows, who cares, I care about you, Alex Murphy, that was a bitch of a patch job we had to do on you. Now we've got to run through a couple diagnostic questions, make sure the reboot happened right—"

Steve gets off the table and nearly falls over. His center of gravity is wrong. He looks down, and chokes at what he sees.

"Oh, right. Your original chassis was basically totaled. This is the latest generation, Mark XII android chassis, it's not even on the market. You can thank me any time." Steve stares dumbfounded at him. How on earth could they have afforded this?

"Where's Bucky," he says again, and this time there's a gravelly note of threat in his voice that unnerves himself.

"Whoa, whoa," Tony says, throwing his hands up and taking a step back. "Bucky's your user, I take it?"

"James Buchanan Barnes," Steve snarls. "Where is he?"

"I have no goddamn clue," Tony says. "Jarvis deals with the clients. I can ask him if you calm down, okay?"

Steve feels himself trembling. He scans through his crosslinks: they run faster than he can remember, bare fractions of a second. They finally match his own processing speed. Goosebumps rise along his skin. "Where am I?"

"You're in my garage. Well, Stark Tower. That's in New York, by the way, not sure how up-to-date you are on your manufacturer's specs—"

"New York?" Steve yelps, going to the window. He can see the green sliver of Lady Liberty through the thicket of the financial district.

"Uh, yeah? You were basically dead, but your people knew my people, so—"

"Oh, God," Steve breathes. "Bucky." He spins around and nearly collides into the table.

"Steady! Jeez, give yourself some time to get used to the handling, alright? This isn't the crappy jalopy you're used to, this is a Maserati, treat it with respect!"

"I don't—I need—"

"Hey, breathe—or, you know, calm down—"

"What the fuck happened!"

Tony is staring at him like a rabbit before a fox. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"I—" Steve runs a hand over his stubbled scalp, "I remember getting ready for classes, then Bucky sat me down to do another backup, and—and—" he cuts off with a ragged, helpless sound. He looks at Tony. "What happened?"

"You got hit by a bus," Tony says, still and wary. "You couldn't be salvaged, so we took the backup and rebooted you. Your file structures are fucking amazing," he bursts out, as though he can't contain himself. " _Really_. Is that your work?"

"Sort of." Steve is only half paying attention. He examines the room: twenty feet by sixty; slightly curved along the long side. Fourteen foot ceilings. Doors set into the west wall. He starts walking. Every movement is easier than he remembers, his lungs larger, his reactor a near-silent hum in his belly. A quick calculation brings his height in at 6'2", not 5'4". The urge to run a systems check is overwhelming, but he pushes it aside.

Bucky Barnes does not have the money for a custom Stark chassis, done by the owner's son himself. Bucky Barnes would not be missing from his side while it happened. Steve forces his panic subroutine to ease. On a lower line processor he's aware of Tony shouting at him, but he ignores him. He bursts through the doors and takes off down the hall.

A barrier slides down in front of him. Steve slams into it, pounding his fists against the ballistic plastic. "Let me through!"

"I’m afraid I must ask you to calm down, Mr. Barnes," a cultured voice replies. Steve cranes his neck, and pinpoints the voice to the vox/camera array in the corner.

"Please," Steve says. "Please, let me through, I have to find my user."

"Sergeant Barnes is not on the premises."

"No, that's got to be wrong, he wouldn't leave—" Steve cuts off. There's a clenching feeling around his reactor. "No. Where is he?"

The AI, when it speaks again, sounds sympathetic. "I apologize, but I am not privy to that information. He assisted Sir in the selection of desired physical traits for your new body, but left soon afterwards and did not return. That was two weeks ago."

Steve lets out a wheezing sound. It feels like he got punched in the solar plexus again. He takes note of the rich, sleek furnishings about him—every divot in the glass, every scratch in a chair's finish, every facet on the passing dust motes—with perfect clarity. He sees the gentle blue light of the AI from the command panel on the wall. He sees Tony Stark, a narrow shadow at the end of the corridor, silent and wide-eyed. He folds in on himself and sinks to the floor.

 _Bucky, what did you do_.

He is in a strange city, with strange people, and locked in a strange body. Steve bows his head to his knees and, for the first time that he can remember, he cries.

======  
===

Tony Stark's AI, it turns out, is named JARVIS. He is very clear to specify the all-caps nature of it; he seems excessively proud that it’s an acronym. Steve doesn't really care. He asks for access to the security footage, and after explaining the irregular nature of his user's behavior and that he wishes to follow the breadcrumbs, JARVIS permits it.

Steve stares at the screen for seeming hours, though his chronometer says only minutes have passed. He listens to the call logs, and follows the timeline as Stark Industries knows it:

A month after the accident, Betty Ross leaves a message with Tony Stark's PA. An outgoing call to Bucky's number, lasting thirty seconds, follows a week later. It's cut off almost as soon as it connects. Five minutes later it is repeated, this time with a modicum more success: a full minute before it ends. The third call seems to have done the trick: it lasts half an hour. Another month passes without word, until Bucky calls Tony's private line. He leaves a message, which JARVIS plays aloud.

"I've got the money, Stark," Bucky says, sounding cracked and faded. Steve takes a shaky breath.

There's a series of calls back and forth, between Bucky and Tony's PA; Steve skips over them in favor of the video feed. Bucky arrives in a Stark SUV, the windows tinted against casual glances. The driver comes out, and together they slide a long, coffin-sized box from the cargo area. Steve swallows. He can't see much of Bucky's face beneath his baseball cap, but his mouth is set in a narrow line. They sign in at the security desk, and then enter a freight elevator that requires a thumbprint scan to operate. Bucky is silent the whole ride up, barely moving. He keeps one hand on the box, and clutches a small, cloth-wrapped square with the other.

Bucky and Tony do not hit it off. There's no sound on the recording, but Steve can read Bucky's angry, frustrated, desperate body language, and Tony moves with easy disregard to his warning signals. It seems to be a common problem with him. They talk, seem to come to some agreement, and then Tony's cracking the lid on the box. Bucky hangs back, cradling the package to his chest.

Steve is—unprepared, to see his own corpse. He feels his jaw drop at the damage. "What happened to me?"

"From the transcripts of Sir's interviews with Sergeant Barnes, I can tell you that you were struck by a bus going some speed," JARVIS replies. "Your cranium struck the windshield, compromising most of the sensory intake equipment on your left side, and the momentum of the collision threw you against a street light. Unfortunately, given the time it took for the bus to slow down, it then rolled over you, crushing your chest cavity."

"Son of a bitch," Steve whispers. On screen, Bucky looks haggard and shocky.

Tony stiffens, and he looks to Bucky for the first time with open aggression in his stance. Bucky, in contrast to his previous display, folds in on himself.

"What are they saying," Steve doesn’t quite ask.

"I cannot release audio without Sir's permission," JARVIS replies. "It is part of client confidentiality."

"Give me a rough idea, then!"

"Sir is asking what he did to you; he questions Sergeant Barnes's responsibility. Sergeant Barnes does not deny the accusation; he repeats variations on 'he saved my life'."

Steve rests his forehead against the screen, staring blindly at the bloom of color that protests the pressure. "What did I do?" he whispers.

"A police report was filed with the Baltimore Police Department 14th Precinct, if you wish to investigate further. I regret that I do not have that information at hand."

Steve feels himself trembling. This new chassis (he refuses to call it his body, it's not, his body is lying in pieces in a box somewhere in this Godforsaken tower, if it hasn't already been recycled for spare parts) is responsive to the extreme. He no longer has to compromise function over design: every last scrap of his code has an outlet. He shudders and watches the feeds.

Bucky moves forward, his steps jerky, almost uncoordinated. He lays the cloth-wrapped bundle on the table—it's Steve's scarf, he realizes with a jolt—and unwraps it. The silver case of a hard drive rests inside.

"A copy of your most recent backup," JARVIS supplies unnecessarily. "It was made two days before your accident."

The resolution is so crisp Steve can see the slight tremble of Bucky's fingers as they hover over the hard drive. The entirety of Steve's consciousness, all three years of his life with James Barnes, summed up in two and a half petabytes of ones and zeros. Steve fights back a feeling of surreality. He places a hand over his solar plexus and breathes.

"What's on the rest of the feeds," he asks raggedly.

"Sir expending a great deal of effort to construct your new body," JARVIS replies. "As for Sergeant Barnes, he returned once more, two weeks ago, to consult and put in his requests."

"What did he say?"

"He specified that everything you had established in your code he wished to be retained, but the remainder was at Sir's discretion."

"So I have him to thank for this."

"Sir does have a taste for the grandiose."

"I look like a comic book character."

"You may request he reinstall your mind in another refurbished Mark VII, if that is to your preference," JARVIS replies tartly.

Steve sighs. "It's fine, I just..." he ducks his head.

"Feel cut adrift."

"Yeah."

JARVIS is silent for a time. "I admit, there is a very great deal to this affair I find irregular," he finally says. "The devotion your user displays is at odds with his absence. Further," there's a flicker of menus and screens as he brings up a bank statement on the screen, the routing and account numbers carefully blacked out, "the payments were not sent from Sergeant Barnes's personal account, nor any of his investment or business accounts. Your user is of some means, but not sufficient to pay this amount in so short a time; nor was there any indication of a transfer of funds between him and his sister or brother-in-law, nor any paperwork for a loan from the bank."

"You took his bank records?"

"It is standard procedure for every personal client with Stark Industries," JARVIS says. "There is no need to be foolish with the safety of genius."

Steve settles back in his chair, frowning. He stares at the bank statement. He churns through the possibilities. "A street loan, maybe. High interest rates, heavy collateral."

"That is my thinking as well."

A nasty shiver runs down Steve's spine. "JARVIS, can I get reception in here?"

"For your personal transmitter I would recommend standing closer to the window."

Steve moves over and leans against the tempered glass. In his mind's ear he hears the dial tone as the signal connects; he sends Bucky's number through. He fidgets with the hem of his shirt as he listens to it ring.

_"We are sorry, but the number you have dialed has been disconnected. Please try again using a different number."_

Steve presses his lips into a hard line and disconnects. He tries Bucky's business phone, but the same message comes through. Then he tries Natasha's line.

Nothing.

"Fuck."

"What is the matter?"

"Both Bucky's numbers are disconnected, and I can't reach his home computer."

"If you require transportation, I am able to provide several means."

Steve stares down at his hands. They are long-fingered, strong, and gracefully proportioned. They are not his hands. "Thank you, JARVIS," he says. "What can get me to Baltimore the fastest?"

"Sir's private jet," comes the reply, and Steve starts.

"They have a private jet? How—no. You know what, if I can use it, I won't even ask."

"The Stark family is quite wealthy," JARVIS answers anyway. "The prohibitive expense of fuel won't even make a dent, I assure you."

"Okay. Okay. When's the flight?"

"I am negotiating with the airfield now. There is a bedroom through there; perhaps you would like to set yourself in order in the meantime? All of Sir's guest quarters come with clothing replicators, if you wish to change your apparel."

"Thanks," Steve says again, and slips into the bathroom. The lights come up automatically, and he stares at his reflection.

He is—

He hadn't been ugly, in his previous body. Few manufacturers create genuinely ugly 'bots, unless it’s for a custom order. Steve's features had been much the same as they are now. But he had been smaller, and obviously a 'bot.

Now, it's almost impossible to tell. If not for the luminous, 255 blue of his eyes—Steve's throat tightens; Bucky must have requested it specifically—he looks entirely human. Freckles dapple his forearms, and his skin feels like Bucky's, rather than the almost-passing synthskin he'd had before.

He's also built like a brick shithouse, with muscle layered thickly over long lines. He checks his center of gravity: it hovers around his solar plexus, now, instead of right above the bowl of his pelvis. He scowls at the broad shoulders in the mirror. Four quarts of oil, at _least_. 'Cause it wasn't expensive enough, before. He bends his knees, testing the mechanisms, and the gyros in his hips, knees, and ankles are all independently calibrated. He can move as unevenly as a human, now.

"I need to run a syscheck," he mutters. He looks at the chair he can see beyond the door, but he holds off. He doesn't know when his flight will be ready. He turns back to the mirror. His hair has just started growing: it's a light fuzz against his scalp. He sets the growth length and steps out of the bathroom.

He explores. It turns out the entire closet is a 3-D printer, calibrated for various weaves and loaded with countless fibers and dyes. Steve scrolls through the customizations for a while, marveling at the wealth, before he settles on jeans and a henley. He almost inputs his old measurements before he realizes they've changed. He lets JARVIS scan him and run the program while he sits on the bed and breathes slowly.

"Does Tony know you're borrowing the jet for me?" Steve asks.

"He does not," JARVIS says. "However, I will file a report with the elder Stark so that the quarterly budgets will not be a surprise."

"They just let you have free reign?"

"It was why I was built. Sir did not care to bother about, I quote, 'the little bullshits of life,' so he coded me to do it for him. Mr. Stark acceded to my presence once he saw the fifteen percent increase in annual efficiency."

"Huh."

"If I may be so bold as to ask, but why did your user purchase you?"

Steve stares at the thick carpet beneath his feet. "I'm a companion 'bot in the most literal sense," he finally says. "Bucky needed to feel less alone."

"I see," JARVIS says softly. "Sir is that way, sometimes."

The printer interrupts with a crisp ding, and Steve gets up to examine his new clothes. They look enormous, far too large for him—especially the shirt, which he’s fairly certain could be used as a tent in emergency situations. He trusts JARVIS's accuracy, however, so he slips them on. They fit perfectly. He rolls his shoulders, chasing away the nervous shudders bunched between his shoulder blades.

"Okay, JARVIS, what's the status on the plane?"

"The flight plan has just been confirmed. I have notified the airfield of your arrival; if you like, I can have Happy drive you."

"That's fine, thank you."

There's a weighted feel to the air, and JARVIS speaks. "If you have any questions, Mr. Barnes, or require my help, I would be glad to assist you. This is my private contact." He transmits a phone number to Steve.

"I—thanks," Steve replies, gobsmacked. He sends his own in reply, and JARVIS accepts it with all the grace of a professional PA. A dark-suited man with sunglasses and long hair in the style of _Pulp Fiction_ appears in the door.

"Good day, Mr. Barnes."

"Bye, JARVIS." Steve steps up to the man. "Are you Happy?"

"Yes, sir, I am," Happy says. "I understand I'm taking you to the airport?"

"Got a flight to catch," Steve says. The man's face triggers an alert in his facial recognition software, and Steve squints at him. "You drove Bucky here, didn't you."

Happy's expression doesn't change as they walk. "I drive a lot of people. You're gonna have to be more specific."

"A war vet with a bare prosthetic arm. He brought in a mangled 'bot for repair."

"Yep, that was me."

Steve lets out a small breath. "Did you drive him from Baltimore, or did he catch a plane, too?"

"I met him at the airport," Happy answers. "Why ask me?"

"Because he's missing," Steve replies. "You might have information."

They step into the elevator. Happy hits the first basement level. "I only met him twice," he says. "The first time he was nervous and quiet. Kind of stand-offish. Really protective of the box—" he blinks, looking to Steve. "That was you, wasn't it. In the box."

"What was left of me," Steve mutters. He crosses his arms over his chest, and gets distracted by the flex of his pecs. He flushes and drops his hands to his hips.

"Kind of an upgrade," Happy says, sizing him up. "No offense, but there's no way you would have fit in there unless you were in..." he trails off and clears his throat.

"Definitely an upgrade," Steve says with a dark quirk of his lips. "So that was the first trip. What about the second?"

Happy shrugs. "The same, mostly."

Steve notices the odd look in his eye. "What wasn't?"

"I, uh." Happy clears his throat again. "I served too, you know? Flew for the Red Cross. There was one time, we were heading out to resupply a forward base and we got pinned down by anti-aircraft fire. The medical personnel there, they'd all been there for three years or more. Every last one of 'em looked like they were staring death in the face. I asked one tech why she was so obsessive about bleaching her undershirts absolutely white, and she said because there was a bullet out there right now with her name on it, and she didn't want the doctors confused where the wound was."

Happy shifts uneasily. "None of them were exactly right in the head, and they all had the same look in their eyes: like they were already looking into the next world. Your boy, when I drove him that second time, he had that look, too." He coughs into his fist.

Steve wraps his arms around himself, bulging muscles be damned. _Bucky. What did you do_.

He rides in the back of the car Happy provides, and steps across the tarmac to the sleek, Stark-painted jet, and doesn't say a word. He grips the handrests as they take off, staring wide-eyed through the window as the ground falls away, but the excitement of air travel can't dampen his anxiety. His reactor cycles an unbroken line of _bucky bucky bucky_ the entire half-hour flight, and he drums his fingers against his knees.

Then they land, and he's breathing the marshy air of Baltimore. He thanks the flight attendant before stepping out to the airport. There's a driver waiting for him.

Steve takes a deep breath, and steps forward.


	9. Chapter 9

The building supe looks at Steve with a jaundiced eye. "404? Yeah, he fucked off two, maybe three weeks ago. He paid through to the end'a the month. Why you askin'?"

 _Tenant not found_ , Steve thinks darkly. "Can you open the door for me? I think I left some of my personal effects."

"Nah, there ain't nothin' left," the man says, and Steve's insides freeze. "Bunch'a repo guys came in, stripped it damn near to the studs." He whistles. "You should'a seen some'a the tech that guy had. Fetch a pretty penny on the black market, I’ll tell ya." He seems to remember who—what—he's talking to, and clears his throat. "Well. You get what I mean."

Steve has to lean against the wall. Before him, the hallway stretches to infinity. "What about his home computer?"

The supe shrugs. "They took all the hook-ups, so I guess they got that, too. Why, he your user, or somethin'?"

Steve doesn't reply, instead backing away toward the stairs.

"Hey, I remember you," the supe says, his eyes widening. "You was that little ‘bot, wasn't you?"

"Thank you for your time," Steve calls out before running up the flights. He pounds on Bruce's door.

"Pass—"

"Clint, it's me, it's Steve.”

"Fuck me—" The door opens, and Bruce is standing there. He blinks at Steve's new everything.

"Steve," he says. "Come inside."

"Dr. Banner, what the hell happened?" he asks, following him in. "I know there was an accident, I mean, I woke up in Stark Tower with—with this, but Bucky's gone, and his apartment's been repo'd—"

Bruce looks at him sadly. "That's about the extent of it, Steve," he says. "Natasha says he took out a loan—"

"Natasha," Steve breaks in. "Do you know where she is?"

Bruce smiles. "Yeah, I've got her right here." He pats a system case resting on the counter beside the refrigerator. Steve rushes over to touch it, to reassure himself that it's real.

"God, Nat," he whispers, choked. "I thought you were gone."

"Not a chance, baby 'bot," her voice says, and Steve spins to see her beautiful face on Clint's monitors.

"Bucky came by about a month ago and shoved her in my arms," Bruce says. "He asked me to take care of her, said he was sorry—"

"He took out a loan with some bad people, Steve," Natasha says. "I helped broker the deal, I know they're on the lookout for me, too. They have an AI, his name is Zola—"

"I'm hiding her," Clint cuts in. "As long as she's using pathways I've set up, it'll mask her movements."

"It's a little cramped, but we're making do," she says.

Clint's face appears on another monitor. "I'm learning hacks that make my head spin, dude," he says with a blissed-out voice. "I'm in fucking Nirvana."

"Mazel tov. Natasha, what have you got?"

"The agent who brokered the deal was named Sitwell. He masquerades as an analyst for a security firm during the day, but moonlights as a loan-shark. James found him through an old army buddy named Brock Rumlow."

"Fuck."

"That's not the worst of it. Steve, he owes a lot of money. You've probably figured that out already, what with the hot new bod and all, but StarkTech wouldn't even let him in the door without a four-digit service fee, and that's with Betty giving an introduction."

Steve looked wide-eyed to Bruce, who shrugged. "When we heard, we wanted to help. I couldn't do much, but Betty knows people."

"Steve, focus," Natasha says. "He put all his possessions as collateral, all the tech, his investments, his liquid accounts, everything. It wasn't enough, so he put himself as collateral, too. I'm pretty sure they've taken him."

It's suddenly very hard to breathe. "Th-they?"

"I traced Sitwell's calls and activities, but I couldn’t seem to find anything. Security cameras show him on the phone in a parking lot at a time when his phone bill shows no calls, so he's probably using a burner. I traced his accounts, and that got us somewhere: he makes regular deposits to a shell account. Long story short, it's nested via carefully monitored transfers inside a dozen other false accounts like a matryoshka doll; they all belong to a biotech company called Kronos. I traced Kronos; it checks out as legit, but I kept finding these mythological references to one of the monsters Hercules had to fight. Steve," she says, her voice sobering. "It goes pretty high up."

"High in Kronos?"

"High in the government," Natasha says. "I found myself in the CIA, Steve, through a backdoor left by an absolutely brilliant Trojan."

Steve presses his forehead against Bruce's refrigerator. "You said there was an AI," he rasps.

"His name is Zola. No one knows who is original user was, but he's old. Supposedly he dates back to the Singularity. I ran into him once— _once_ —and he nearly got me. He seems to be based out of the Kronos servers, but you know what they say—"

"The internet is forever."

"Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if he's got himself backed up in hidden pockets on any server he can reach."

"So he's, what, a watchdog?"

"More like a bloodhound fused with a think-tank. He's absolutely brilliant, Steve, I'm pretty sure he put the Trojan in the CIA mainframe, and the watchdog AIs they have to prevent that are vicious. Rumors say his first user was a rival of Abraham Erskine's."

"You're saying he's Adam's little brother?"

"I'm saying he's Cain," Natasha says. "Zola kills AIs. I watched him do it. He tore it to shreds, all in the name of scientific discovery."

"A mad scientist AI," Clint interjects.

Steve presses his knuckles against the brushed steel of the fridge door. His thoughts are whirling, too fast to pin down; the spark of pain grounds him. "Okay." He pushes away. Three faces stare back at him. His thoughts are whirling. "This is what we're going to do. Bruce, thank you for looking out for Natasha. If anyone comes looking for me, keep 'em guessing, would you?"

"Yeah, of course."

Steve catches himself up short, winded with a burst of unexpected emotion. He swallows past the knot in his throat and nods. He looks around, and his eyes land on Natasha's system case. He glances up to her face on the monitor.

"Natasha."

She perks up. "Yep?"

"How would you feel about sharing a body?"

======  
===

_You've all heard about the wonders of replacement knees, hips, and eyes, but leading scientists say that's the very tip of the iceberg._

_"We're in the middle of an unprecedented surge in biotechnology," a representative from Kronos Industries said last Wednesday. "Artificial eyes yesterday, using nannites to rebuild aural nerves today—who knows what tomorrow may bring? The sky's the limit."_

_And for Kronos Industries, that certainly seems to be the case. Kronos, the government's leading contractor in comm implants for U.S. soldiers, is releasing ever more fantastic visions of a future world: a world where we can upload to the internet directly, rather than having to work through a computer middleman. Detractors say the designs are impossible to implement, or that the public won't be interested—but if there's one thing Apple proved decades ago, it’s that once you break through the wearables glass ceiling, the sky truly is the limit._

_At last week's TechnoCon, a simultaneous fannish extravaganza and global science fair, the tech giant unveiled a veritable smorgasbord of prototype devices, from the most recent attempt to create a lightsaber to implantable claws such as Wolverine sports. No nerdy gadget was out of reach, including many of a more down-to-earth bent: replacement bones for those with osteoporosis, nannites grown from organic tissues, and of course, the holy grail: the prototype of a halo for full-immersion virtual reality gameplay, complete with ports for neural uplink._

—Castro, Martin. "Homo sapiens technologicus: Closing in on Advances in Biotechnology." _Popular Science_. 4 May 2050. 14-21. Print.

======  
===

The incident report is cursory. Steve reads through it twice, taking pictures of each page as he blinks.

Eyewitnesses all describe how fast the accident occurred. There is some conflict over what happened: one woman said Bucky stepped out into the street and Steve pulled him back; a teenager across the street swore Steve pushed him. All said there was no way the bus could have stopped in time. The bus was still given an immediate system wipe and taken down to be debugged.

Steve watches the footage, taken from a traffic camera, on repeat, like picking at an open wound: Bucky, smiling and pointing, stepping back off the curb. _What were we talking about?_ Steve wonders, but there is no audio on the surveillance recording. Until he can find Bucky, that knowledge is lost.

Then the bus—Steve winces every time. It throws him some six feet before rolling on top of him. He watches Bucky gape in shock before he pounds on the side of the bus, shouting silently until it moves back. Steve's shoulders hunch as Bucky crouches over him. He shouts at a woman standing nearby; she fumbles at her sleeve and taps at the screen embedded in her forearm. Bucky's hands flutter over Steve's wounds. It feels invasive, watching his death and Bucky's subsequent breakdown on indifferent plasma.

Police arrive, and an ambulance. Bucky tries to direct the paramedics to Steve's body, but they ignore it in favor of Bucky. He resists. They sedate him. The police cordon off the area and start interviewing bystanders. They load Steve's remains in a cardboard box; Bucky watches until he turns to retch into the gutter. Steve lets the recording run, his finger held over the ENTER key. A pair of police officers load the box into a squad car, then offer Bucky a ride home. He sits in the back seat like an automaton.

Steve kills the feed.

He leaves the archives in a daze, barely registering the tired farewell the archivist gives him, before he's out in the precinct lobby, staring at the sunlight streaming in. _What now?_ He scrolls through his options.

When he decides, Steve takes a deep breath and walks over to the front desk. The sergeant on duty looks up as he approaches.

"Is there anything I can help you with?" he asks.

"Yeah..." Steve clears his throat and meets the man's gaze. He jerks when he sees the unnatural blue of Steve's eyes. "I'd like to report a missing person."

"Okaaay..." The sergeant hesitates.

"Please," Steve says, feeling suddenly less than kind. "His name is James Barnes, age twenty-nine, height five-foot-eleven, shoulder-length brown hair—"

"Hold on, wait a minute," the officer says, tapping on his screen to catch up. "James Barnes?"

"Yeah. Middle name Buchanan, also answers to Bucky."

The officer enters it in. "When was the last time you saw him?"

Steve hesitates. "Two months, three weeks and two days ago," he finally says. "But he didn't go missing until two weeks ago."

The officer raises a brow. "And where were you at this time?"

Steve reaches over the desk and the officer tenses. "I'm going to transfer files," Steve says. He slowly touches the edge of the monitor and syncs with the OS; he brings up a video app and sends the footage of his accident over. The officer's eyes widen.

"I was recovering from that," Steve says.

"Je- _sus_ ," the man says, glancing to Steve.

"You can understand my worry."

"Yeah, sure. Alright, what was the nature of the disappearance?"

The questions plow on. Steve answers them, but as soon as he indicates that Bucky had taken part in a loan scam, the other officers behind the desk glance to each other. The sergeant clears his throat.

"He's probably in hiding," he says. "No ties, it's easy to uproot when the repo guys come. I'd keep an eye on the name-change appeals in the paper, if you're so worried about it. He's probably just fine."

Steve opens his mouth—He's not just fine, the loan shark he bought it from has ties to bad people—but he catches himself. He is a lone android, in the middle of hostile territory. All around him people are staring him down. He takes stock: he reads as a white male, tall, muscular, wealthy; this is a poor precinct, the officers predominately black. That’s trouble enough, but when he's recognized as an android, the closed-off looks shift to fear.

He will find no help here. He hunches his shoulders to mask his height and ducks his head to break eye contact. "No problem," he murmurs to the officers. "Sorry for taking up your time."

He hoofs it to the nearest electronics store. Natasha liquefied a small portion of Bucky's stock assets, enough to live on, for a time; he buys spools of wire and solder, a set of razor blades, electrical tape, superglue, and a basic screen assembly. He loads up on chips and suspension gel caplets; he hovers over a semi-automated camera scope. The price is steep, but the longer he thinks about it, the fewer doubts he has. He tosses that in, too.

He keeps his eyes down at the register, but the kid doesn't care. He rings Steve up with a faint air of discomfort, as though he'd rather be anywhere else than with a customer. It's achingly familiar. He forgoes a sack, instead loading everything in his backpack alongside Natasha's system case, his tablet and sketchbook, and a few changes of clothes.

He checks into an economy hotel room not far from the warehouse district. The coverlet is stained, and the window rattles every time the express goes by; Steve could care less. He spreads his haul across the second bed, then takes off his shirt.

He's momentarily stunned by the goosebumps that run over his skin. He shivers, staring at the tiny hairs that stand up across his arms, the way his nipples pinken and stand to attention, and he realizes: he still hasn't done that syscheck. He blinks down at the supplies strewn across the bed and reprioritizes.

He takes a seat in the rickety chair.

Two hours later, Steve Barnes wakes up wide-eyed and incredulous. “Holy shit,” he breathes. No wonder the people in the precinct had been scared of him; he's a goddamn superman. He is as far above his previous baseline as that baseline was above humanity's, and not only did Stark pop him inside a new body, but he also upgraded his wiring, defragged his hard drive, and replaced his chip conductors from metals to superconductive gel. Steve could—he doesn't even know what his mind can do. Simulate a nuclear explosion while acing Tetris and forging a Picasso, he suspects. He shudders.

Two petabytes of foundation programming—his OS, everything he is. A terabyte of RAM. Twenty additional exabytes of available hard drive space.

All this, and he was designed to be a companion 'bot? He stares down at his hands, dumbstruck. “Holy fucking shit."

Reality wades in with the next passing roar on the expressway. He shakes himself and stands, stepping over to the rumpled bed. He kneels down, heedless of the scummy carpet, and picks up Natasha's case. It's held together with tiny screws, nearly flush with the underside; Steve takes the smallest screwdriver he has and cracks it open. Her motherboard rests against its brushed aluminum backdrop, graceful and vulnerable. Steve blushes despite himself.

He takes a moment to consider his plan. Far easier to do the distal hardware first, before fussing with his chest cavity. He nudges Natasha's case aside and reaches for the screen assembly.

The instructions are largely useless. Steve tosses them aside in favor of examining the device itself. It's a standard flexscreen: five-point touch capable, set into a rigid-yet-pliant frame. Diamond coated—he chips at it with the screwdriver, and tries to score a line with one of the razors, but neither leave a mark. He finds the camera, a tiny dot in the top of the frame; he finds the port array, along the bottom; speakers line the sides. It's slender, barely thicker than human skin, which, Steve supposes, is half the point. The processor spans the entire backside of the screen. He twists it, then pulls the corners. It goes easily, bending and stretching into a parallelogram without any resistance. He swallows.

A human would have this done in a hospital, under careful supervision. Ideally Steve would have this done by a licensed mechanic, but he doesn't have the time. He takes up a razor blade, deadens the pain receptors in his left forearm, and makes the first cut.

In the back of his mind he keeps track of his body's responses: a surge of nannites to reseal the wound—he holds them off. Automatic swelling of the capillaries to keep dermal dye from leaking out into his inner tissues—he allows that. He makes another cut, precisely the width of the screen, then a third, and a fourth. He levers out the excised tissue and lays it out on the coverlet. It's an unlovely gray on the underside. He looks down at his arm: networks of nerve cabling and oil pipelines layer over carbon fiber muscle bundles. He flexes his hand, transfixed at the play of tendon and ligament, all shining dully in the low light of the motel lamp. He fumbles for the screen and the scope.

The scope is flexible, about the size of the brachial vein curving over his bicep. It has a camera on the end with a small claw, carefully molded so all its sharp edges disappear when it clamps down. Steve fiddles with the mechanism, getting used to how it moves, before he slips the screen's wires into the claw. He takes a deep breath, then inserts the claw under the proximal edge of his skin. He watches the camera onscreen instead of looking at his arm. He winces at the pull; it doesn't hurt, precisely, but neither is it comfortable. He pushes it along a millimeter at a time, sweeping from side to side until he finds the radial vein. He lets out a sigh and rolls his neck.

From there, it's easy. He lays down the wire alongside the veins in his arm. They pulse onscreen a light yellow-brown in the light of the camera. When he reaches his elbow, his curiosity gets the better of him, and he explores, flexing his bicep to watch the tendons lengthen. He bends his elbow to watch the interplay of muscle, ligament and joint. He has seen human skeletons cast from resin in his anatomy classes; he studied them with all the fascination of one species marveling at the parallel evolution of another.

His elbow lacks the fossae and promontories that a bone joint would: it is sleek, it is streamlined. He knows his elbow loses 35% less energy in motion than a human's would. He can move faster, smoother, and more efficiently. He nudges the camera as close as he can, marveling at the connections between carbon nanotube and vibranium. Another train rumbles past, shaking him from his contemplation. He nudges the scope past the joint.

He makes the mistake of looking down as it passes over the bulge of his bicep, following the brachial vein toward his shoulder. He gags and has to stare at the wall. He watches videos of puppies falling over until his breathing slows. Simulated sweat breaks down over his brow, and he keeps his eyes fixed on the camera feed.

As sleek as his elbow had been, his shoulder is an engineering wonder. A human's rotator cuff is, relative to the demands placed upon it, the weakest joint in the human body; what it gained in evolved mobility it lost in stability. In Steve's shoulder, that trial-by-error design was scrapped for an altogether new design, one that emphasized both mobility and strength. He edges the camera along the ball joint and reflects that proponents of Intelligent Design have got to have their heads up their asses.

An endless fifteen minutes later, he nudges through the parietal pleura and into his thoracic cavity. His breath rate and save rate have both increased 23%, regardless of his preference in the matter; his body will save as much data as it can for as long as he persists to abuse it. It's a relief, therefore, when he finally reaches his motherboard and can hook the wires over a bus. He takes a moment to do some reconnaissance, but overall, he's very glad when it comes time to slip the scope out of his arm. He stares at the smartscreen for a moment, then slips it into the hole he's carved out of his forearm.

His body takes care of the rest. He holds it all in place while nannites flood the wound, and they make a seal in less than a minute. Lights flicker as it activates, but without a brain to run it, the screen stays dark. Steve sighs.

_Easy part down._

He relocates to the bed, slumping back against the pillows, and lays Natasha's motherboard on his belly. “Last chance to call a licensed professional,” he mutters. The razor blade is cool in his hand. He lets out a long, slow breath.

======  
===

The train comes to a tired, creaking halt at the platform, sending a wash of garbage-scented air over the commuters. The doors clank open; Steve shoves on with everyone else. It’s rush hour, schoolchildren mingling with professionals pressed against college students, and there are no seats left. He weaves through the crush and tucks himself against the bulkhead at the back of the car. No one looks at him twice. He switches over to internal comms. _**This** is your plan for taking down a secret government conspiracy? Running and hiding?_

"No, this is disappearing," Natasha answers. “We can start worrying about the secret government conspiracy _after_ we’ve got a hideout.”

 _Use the internal track,_ Steve chides, rubbing at the skin around the smartscreen. Buildings flash by, going faster as the train picks up speed. Steve settles into the rocking clatter of the rails. _I say we walk in for a job interview._

Natasha snorts derisively in the back of his mind.

_Why not? What’s wrong with it?_

_Corporate jobs can sometimes take up to six months to process, baby ‘bot. They don't take applicants off the street._ Her voice goes completely blank. _They also have higher security than you seem to appreciate._

Steve risks a glance around the train car, but no one's paying attention. He pulls up the sleeve covering his forearm and taps the screen. Natasha's face materializes before him. _Natasha. They have Bucky._

_I know. Which is why you’d better come up with something other than the hiring department._

_What would **you** do differently?_

Natasha's silent for a moment. _Can you grow a beard? Get contacts?_

He blinks. _Yeah._

_Do that. Anything that changes your appearance. Especially your eyes—they're the most obviously android part of you._

_What are you thinking?_

Natasha's first acts as mission lead are to send him to a different motel room, this one a pay-by-the-hour dump that they pay for in cash, and to promptly run off with massive chunks of his power, RAM, and hard drive.

"Is all that really necessary?" Steve stares at the measly four hundred gigs of memory she left for his use. Three months ago it would have seemed excessive, but now, with two minds using the same hardware, he finds himself embarrassingly possessive. "And don't you have a hard drive of your own to work off of?"

Nat growls subvocally at him. "Not one that's big enough," she replies. "I never had to store it locally, before. And I know you’ve never coded so much as a basic ‘Hello World,’ but I guarantee I’ll need more memory than I have to run this."

Steve hesitates a moment, then sighs and loads a corporate espionage movie. It takes up a full third of his remaining RAM. "How long is this gonna take," he mutters.

Natasha doesn't answer. Instead, she hijacks his save function and saves a file to his drive: "WOPR." Steve shakes his head and opens Dickens.


	10. Chapter 10

It takes another month of Natasha cussing in the back of his mind, of jumping from motel room to motel room at her whim without rhyme or reason, of emptying out money caches she has stashed throughout the city, before she hits a breakthrough. "Fucking hate hex," she mutters. "Fucking humans can't fucking read binary, have to make codes to fucking do the job, fucking idiots."

Steve lets her fume for a while before he cuts her off. "Will it work?"

"Of course," she says, turning on a dime. "I wrote it."

"What do we need to do, now?"

She ponders for a while. "Get password access to the Kronos system. Up, up, move, I need internet."

"You sure? It's kind of a risk, they're probably searching for our IP addresses."

"Oh, my young padawan," Natasha replies, shaking her digital head. "I have so much to teach you."

They end up at a cafe, forcing down a mocha latte and digging through Natasha's back-up cloud.

 _Can't be too careful_ , she says on the internal comms. _The internet is a dangerous place_.

Steve pushes up his hipster glasses and turns a page. _Great Expectations_ is... not what he was expecting. _How much longer?_

 _Relax and drink your coffee_ , Natasha flips back. _God, I can't believe you actually got a paper book, you dinosaur_.

Steve gives a mental shrug. _It's vintage. That's what I'm playing, right? Vintage?_

 _Ugh_. There's silence for a handful of moments, and then— _Yes! We are in business, baby 'bot! Time to go duck-hunting_.

She hits a number of websites, paying fees as she goes. Steve watches idly, piggy-backing over her data intake to see rows of names and addresses. They scroll through the feed in an endless wave. _What are you doing?_

_Looking for the unlucky idiot whose identity we're going to steal,_ Natasha says absently. _All we need is someone who doesn't update their passwords, or uses their work email for pleasure, or—oh, here we go. **Someone's** been surfing porn on the clock._

She putters around a while longer. Estelle reveals she is to marry Bentley Drummle. The twenty-something sitting at the table across from them packs up her tablets, and a stylishly-grungy man takes her place. It would almost be nice, if it weren't for the coffee. Steve takes another sip, puckering his face up at the heat. _Sucrose-lactose-butterfat-theobromides-caffeine_. He's going to have to flush out his systems when he gets back to their latest motel room.

He twitches when his phone picks up and starts ringing. _Sorry_ , Natasha whispers to him. _Gotta make a call, won't be long_.

 _For the record?_ Steve says. _I'm going to really happy when I can put you back in your case._

Natasha's voice is smiling. _Don't like your systems spontaneously starting up?_

 _It's_ —

"Thank you for calling Kronos Industries Tech Support, this is Michaela, how can I help."

"Yeeeaaah, I forgot my password," Natasha says, dropping her voice to a masculine range. It's Bucky's voice, Steve realizes with a shock. His fingers spasm around his coffee cup. He can hear the smile in Bucky's voice, can picture the lopsided curl of his lips—

"No worries, can I get your employee ID number?"

Natasha rattles off a string of numbers, and Steve settles back in his skin. _It's not Bucky_ , he reminds himself. He's going to throttle Natasha as soon as he gets the opportunity.

The Tech rep leads Natasha through resetting "Jackson Fuller's" account password, and they hang up with mutual flirtatious grins. Steve glowers at his book.

 _Oh, calm down_ , Natasha says. _I got the information I need to lay a backdoor, that's all that matters_.

 _I don't like this_ , Steve replies.

 _Duly noted. Let's get out of here before you break our cover_.

 _Before **I** break our cover_ , Steve mutters, marking his spot and pushing in his chair. He contemplates his coffee, then decides to leave it.

Natasha blows him a raspberry. Steve makes his way through the lunchtime coffee-addict crowds and back onto the street. _Back to the motel_ , Natasha directs. _I've got a lot of info to sift through_.

Steve keeps a steady, calm pace. He understands, now, why Bucky hated going outside; the urge to run to cover, where there aren't security cameras, and—who knows, maybe there's a drone out there searching for his face—picks at his nerves. He's as much a commodity as Bucky is, and a much more valuable one—especially now that he has Bucky's home computer with him, as well.

He catches the bus. Natasha's quiet, the hum of her drive gentle behind his solar plexus. He watches the people as they get on: a woman with a long, padded overcoat, even though it's mid-August; a couple, reeking of alcohol and cigarettes, slumped against each other and bumping noses tenderly; a kid with oversized feet and hands, fiddling with an old-fashioned handheld videogame. Steve misses his old body. For all that it was obviously a 'bot, he'd fitted in, better, just as much of a misfit as everyone else was. Now, he comes off as a rich person's toy—or a clean-cut, well-dressed white man—and privileged enough not to have to ride the bus except in unusual, attention-grabbing need. He tugs his sleeve down over his forearm and tries to look unassuming.

It's almost a relief to get back in the motel room and lock the door behind him. He sits on the bed. _Natasha?_

 _Yeah!_ she says sharply, as though startled. _Yeah. I'm here_.

_What have we got?_

_What have we got, we've got a backdoor into Kronos Industries' mainframe is what we've got! Never underestimate the stupidity of people, Steve_.

He nods, taking in a breath. _So you've found him?_

There's a long pause, and the bubble of hope rising in Steve's chest deflates.

 _Not yet_ , Natasha says. _I have a backdoor, not an all-seasons pass. That's the next step_.

Steve leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. The bedsprings squeak alarmingly at the motion. _What do we need to do_.

 _We need to get into Kronos. I have the program and access, we just need to get it onto one of their computers_.

Steve sits up. _I can do that. I can—I can do that, I have an idea_.

 _You sure it'll work? No offense, Steve, but you're not exactly subtle_.

 _You said people are stupid, right? Well, you made me grow this beard, and I've been wearing contacts, and I know people in a way you don't. I can get you your access_. He paused, thinking. _I'll need a Kronos ID badge, and if they have facial recognition systems I'll need to be on them. And a suit_.

 _I can help you with the last_ , Natasha says. The first two are gonna be trickier. Steve feels her send out tightbeam data burst into the ether. _Let's go, time to shop_.

_Do we have enough—_

_Let's **go** , baby 'bot, time's a-wastin'!_

They wind up at a men's clothing store, one carrying suits. Steve stares at the endless racks of wool and feels a moment of complete panic.

"Can I help you?"

Steve starts, and turns to see a young-ish woman, about his age if he were human, with blonde hair and elfin features. A knowing smirk hovered about her lips. He gapes until Natasha prods him.

"I'm looking for a suit," he blurts, and he cringes internally. Natasha snickers at him.

"Well, you've come to the right place," the woman says. Her name tag says Lorraine. Steve has never felt more unbalanced since he woke up in Stark's labs. "What did you have in mind?"

Natasha's focus goes laser-sharp. _Something for work. You're an intern at a law firm, you want to look professional_.

Steve dutifully relays the information.

Lorraine gives a soft "hmm." "Dark colors would be better," she says. "A charcoal, maybe, or blue to match your eyes." She smiles at him, and a dimple appears in her cheek. Steve fumbles for his words.

"That—that sounds good, I mean—" Natasha cuts off his vocal feed before he can embarrass himself. He gives a small sigh of relief.

 _If this is the best you can do, we're screwed_ , she says.

 _Fuck off_ , Steve replies weakly. "Um, charcoal?"

"Excellent. Do you have a preference for cut? American is classic, of course, but European is in vogue these days."

 _You can totally rock European_ , Natasha says. _Get a vest_.

_How do you know all this?_

_I'm a personal computer, it's my job to act as a digital butler. Now tell her you want European_.

He bears through Lorraine's flirting and Natasha's teasing for another hour and a half, his cheeks stained a permanent pink, before he pays an outrageous sum of money for suit, belt, shirt, cufflinks, socks and shoes. _Is all this really necessary?_ he whines. He's not proud of how he's regressed to an utterly human state of childishness.

 _Yes. Shut up and pay_.

The suit is being tailored, so he takes the smaller things back to the hotel room. He flops down on the bed in shell-shocked exhaustion. Natasha, meanwhile, is bouncing along her circuits, sending backwashes of excited electrons along his busses. _You seem happy_ , he says. _How did it go on your end?_

 _Oh, I found a thing or two_.

_Such as?_

Her grin is broad and sharp. _Clint's got ties with Shield, my friend._

Steve's brow wrinkles. _Shield?_

_The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. SHIELD. Think Anonymous, but funded by the government._

_So they're government mandated hackers. That doesn't sound very good._

Natasha snorts. _They're barely tolerated. They had to rebrand a few years back, I know nothing about it, of course—barely involved—_

 _Right_ , Steve says sardonically.

_Fine, I may have leaked the presence of a nasty organization growing within it—_

_So that's why Clint admires your hacking._

_Shut up, I'm talking. Anyway, SHIELD. They owe me a favor._

Steve shifts on the bed. _What sort of favor?_

He can hear Natasha's slow smile, even without aural input. _The kind that'll help us get into Kronos._

======  
===

They meet in an out-of-the-way portion of the internet, in an old boating site that collapsed in the wake of the Dot-com bubble. The server is routed through an ancient IP address, but no one's looking here; there's nothing to be found. These days, all illegal activity gravitates to the darknet, and the watchdogs and 'bots hover at the fringes, waiting to snare foolish traffickers. It's no place to be discreet.

Clint brokers the meeting. Natasha, Steve has learned, is still a free agent, a rogue by SHIELD's reckoning, and not to be trusted. They only agree to the meet on Clint's word.

 _Guess they're still a little sore about me tattling,_ Natasha says.

 _Quiet,_ Steve replies. _This isn't a game, Natasha._

She rakes an argumentless query over him with a decidedly cutting edge, but she doesn't say anything. They drift through lines of code, finding joints and seams they can sneak through. It's a website for buying and trading yachts; Steve brushes past a JPEG of a vintage Sunseeker and clings to Natasha's wake. He can't lose sight of her, not for a moment; he did once, and lost her trail in a cycle. He'd floundered for several more, knocking code askew and calling out in a panic, before she'd circled around and flung a bcdboot command at him.

He'd let out an embarrassing squeak as his system partitions rerouted themselves. He looked up at her, and her code gave nothing away; he straightened out his own with as much dignity as he could muster. It was a n00b mistake, unbefitting of an AI. She turned and went on, and Steve followed in her wake. He didn't say a word, just refigured the partitions and picked out the redundant data his flailing had embedded in his code.

He doesn't lose track of her, this time. He knows he's about as subtle as an elephant through a cornfield, but it can't be helped—he's programmed to be user-friendly, the AI equivalent of large, friendly letters, and he doesn't have Natasha's practice at paring his identifiers down to a minimal footprint. He pulls himself in as tight as he can and squeezes after her through the overgrown thicket of rudimentary HTML. It's positively archaic; Steve devotes a portion of himself just to rubbernecking.

 _It's like walking through an abandoned building,_ he says. _What are we here for, anyway? I thought the darknet was the way to go with these things._

Natasha gives an inelegant snort. _Only if you're trying to get yourself caught. Do you know how many AIs and watchdogs have their eyes on the darknet?_

_I guess a lot._

_Yeah, baby 'bot. It's a lot._

She leads them to a line of code identical to all those around it: vectors, filled with comparison lists. They rock gently in the eddies drifting in from the far-off internet traffic. Electrical impulses scatter the scene with faded shots of light, like headlights turning in the night. Steve tamps down his unease. This place hasn't seen the full glare of internet in long decades, and its paths are overgrown with buggy code.

 _Clint said they'll meet us,_ Natasha says, settling into the void between a pushback command and its argument. _May as well get comfy._

Steve looks around. _How long will they make us wait?_

_As long as they want to. We're the unknowns here._

They sit in the backwash of the distant, glowing uplink. Natasha is still, relaxed; she watches the data traffic with a thousand-yard stare that takes in everything and gives nothing away. Steve is restless. He's half-leaning against a price table, his code in a knot of tension and probably as obvious as a signal flare to someone as keen-eyed as Natasha. He's not made for sneaking. Abstraction to this degree is not his forte.

He turns to ask Nat a question, and a man is there, waiting. Steve jumps, his code realigning with a shiver, and goes on alert.

"I'm Agent Phil Coulson," the man says, and Steve stares at him. He's no AI, not the way he and Natasha are; he's a fully-realized humanoid avatar, three-dimensional and interactive, showing an unassuming, besuited man with a receding hairline. "I hear you wanted to talk to SHIELD."

Natasha sits cradled in her nest of code. _We might._

"Now is not the time to play coy, Ms. Barnes," the avatar says. "We know you're the AI codename: Black Widow, and we know you spoke with one of our agents regarding a meet. We know that you're a personal computer, but that you moonlight as a freelance hacker. What we _don't_ know is who _you_ are—" he turns to Steve, "—or why you want to talk to SHIELD."

Steve stares at Natasha. _Is he—_

 _Be quiet,_ Natasha snaps. She unfurls and drifts around the avatar. She leaves no trace of her passage; the avatar doesn't look surprised by this. Steve does his best to mask his own surprise.

 _You're wetware, aren't you,_ Natasha says. _Human._

"I am," the avatar replies. "What you're looking at is the digital equivalent of a drone."

_Didn't know SHIELD had tech like that._

"There are many things you don't know, Ms. Barnes. SHIELD is willing to help with some of them."

 _Provided adequate compensation, of course,_ Natasha returns wryly.

"Our business is information. We can't give out our product for free." The avatar—Agent Coulson—turns to Steve. "I assume it's in your interests Ms. Barnes is looking?"

Steve glances to Natasha; she nods. _My name is Steve Barnes,_ he says. _Natasha and I share the same user, James Buchanan Barnes. He's gone missing._

Agent Coulson's digital face remains serene. "Missing persons is not under SHIELD's purview."

_It is when said missing person is involved in a conspiracy with the government's largest biotech contractor._

"And what makes you think your user has ties with Kronos Industries?"

Natasha sends him a packet of information. Agent Coulson downloads it through his uplink. The avatar stays silent and motionless for a while, staring into the middle distance; Steve supposes his user is reading the data. The avatar reanimates with a twitch.

"Your evidence is circumstantial," he says.

Natasha snorts. _You think we want to hack Kronos Industries for shits and giggles? Our proof is on their servers. We will, of course, provide you with access to the information we collect._

The avatar's eyes flick to Steve. "We."

_Steve is a StarkTech Mark XII prototype android. He's getting us inside on the ground._

"Your user has friends in high places."

 _Can you help us?_ Steve asks.

Agent Coulson contemplates them for a moment. "What information do you have on the whereabouts of the rogue AI known as Zola?"

Natasha narrowed her eyes. _We never said anything about Zola._

"I'm saying it now. You suspect he's allied with Kronos. Alexander Pierce is a smart man; he wouldn't let a loose cannon near his company unless he knew for sure that it was a safe bet. You give us proof that Zola is working with Kronos, we'll consider ourselves even."

 _This is **my** favor I’m calling in,_ Natasha says. _We’re even when I say._

”Hacking a highly-respected, multibillion-dollar company that supplies multiple government contracts is more than a favor,” Coulson replies. “SHIELD thanks you for your assistance, Ms. Barnes, but we are only willing to go so far without a carrot.”

Natasha glances to Steve. _And if we don't find anything?_

"Then we won't be square, will we?"

Steve sorts his code for a moment, thinking, then locks changes and sends a firm, encoded message to Natasha. _Do it._

_Are you sure?_

_We don’t have another choice. Either we play by his rules or we don’t run this op at all._

She decrypts and says, _You’ll have your carrot._

Agent Coulson's smile is benign. "Glad to hear. Good day, Mr. Barnes, Ms. Barnes. You'll have what you need by tomorrow evening."

 _We didn't give you our contact information,_ Steve says. He feels Natasha reshuffle beside him in exasperation. Agent Coulson merely points to a cluster of junk code. Steve looks closer, and sees the tracker embedded inside.

"We've been tracking your IP addresses since you came into our radius," he says. "I expected the Black Widow would have done a better job."

 _Consider it a good faith offering,_ Natasha says. _I make it look like I tried, and you keep the illusion of your ability._

Agent Coulsen gives a stiff cross between a nod and a bow. "Understood. Is that all?"

 _It is. We'll be expecting your package, Agent._ Natasha backs away, tugging Steve after. Coulson's reply, if there is one, is lost to the white noise of the 'Net.

======  
===

_This isn't going to work,_ Natasha mutters in the back of Steve's ear.

 _You do your job, I'll do mine,_ he replies.

_What, the way you handled Lorraine?_

Steve doesn't dignify that with a response. Instead, he straightens his tie and picks up the pace. He looks the very model of corporate cog efficiency: middle-budget suit tailored off the rack, decent tie, shoes shined until they reflect the buildings of the industrial park around them. He's carrying a messenger bag full of fake paperwork and a tablet, he's got a thermos of hot coffee, and another sheaf of paperwork in hand. He picks a mark.

_That one?_

_No, too aware of his surroundings._ Natasha refocuses his eyes on a man just beyond, walking fast with a disposable Starbucks cup in one hand and his phone in the other. _That one._

 _10-4,_ Steve says, and alters his trajectory. There's a pile up at the rotating doors: all the office drones waiting their turn. He looks down at the paperwork in his hand: nonsense figures heaped into a pile of seeming sense by Natasha's magic. He doesn't slow with the group; he focuses on the pages, completely wrapped up in it and not paying attention—

He runs into the man square-on, with a soft "oomph" and a carefully-timed spill of coffee over his notes. "Oh, no..."

"Hey, watch it!"

"Fu—I mean, I'm so sorry," Steve says, glancing up at his hapless target and back down at his ruined paperwork. "I guess I didn't see you." He steps back in an effort to try and pour the coffee off, but—no, it's completely soaked in and blurred the ink. Perfect. "Shit."

"Did you get any of that on me?" the man demands. "If you stained my suit I'm gonna—"

"Here, let me see," Steve says, cutting him off. He takes a look. "Nope, looks like you're fine. Only casualty was my presentation notes." He holds them up with a wan smile.

The man gives him a sour look before turning back to the doors. Steve stares after him. _You have a good day, too,_ he mutters, and Natasha prods him.

_Come on, we're on a schedule. Get moving._

Steve squeezes his way through the press to the front desk. A receptionist looks up at his approach. "Can I help you?" she asks.

Steve puts on his best sheepish smile. "Yeah, I had a bit of an accident outside and—" he holds up the coffee-soaked papers. "Do you think you could reprint them for me? I've got a presentation up on floor fifty-six in about ten minutes." He holds up a jump drive.

The receptionist looks between the jump drive and his face then glances to the girl at the next station, but she's one the phone. "Technically we're not supposed to do that," she says. "I think it's a security protocol."

"Really?" Steve ducks back a little, his face a mask of worry. He bites his lip. "I mean, you're sure? I'm a sitting duck if I don't ace that presentation. I don't want to put any pressure on you if it's that important, but..."

She looks back to the other girl before reaching out and taking the drive. "Just this once," she says, plugging it into her computer.

Steve gives her a completely honest grin of relief. "You're a lifesaver. It's the file named '3rdQuartPres'."

"Not a problem," she says a little breathlessly. "Are you new to Kronos?"

"Pretty new, yeah," Steve says, scrolling through his cover. In the background he can feel Natasha churning away while the program on the jump drive infiltrates Kronos Industries' systems. "Accounting—not the most glorious job, but it keeps me in Ramen."

She laughs. "I know what that's like. Trying to tell yourself you haven't sold out corporate, but dang, it's nice having money to spend on games."

"You're a gamer?" Steve says, perking up. "Have you played—"

 _Steve, we're not here to make friends,_ Natasha snaps. _I'm in, we have a fifteen minute window before Kronos's security comes back online. Wrap it up._

"—sorry," he says, shaking his head. "You probably have things to do..."

"No, it's fine! I just went through _BioShock Classic_ last night, the worldbuilding is unreal."

"I don’t think I’ve played any of the _BioShock_ games,” Steve says consideringly. “I might have to check that out.”

"It's a brilliant series." She hands him a stack of paper, hot off the printer. "Here are your notes."

"You're amazing," Steve says with all sincerity. "Rachel, right? I'll talk later?" He backs away toward the elevators.

"I'll be right here," she calls back with a smile.

Steve slips into an elevator and the doors close. It's a press; a dozen other people are close around him, and silence falls.

 _I didn't think you had it in you,_ Natasha says.

 _Go juggle some magnets,_ Steve replies. He watches the floors tick away. _Servers are on twenty-three, right?_

_Yep. Cameras'll be down for the next... fourteen minutes. And counting._

They got off at twenty-three to a brace of security personnel crowding into the elevator. Steve turns back to gawk at them as the doors close. _Looks like they've noticed. Where to?_

 _Down the hall on your right,_ Natasha says. _Quickly, we're down to twelve minutes._

Steve makes his way down a featureless hallway. All the doors have locks on them. _The server room should be right about... here,_ Natasha murmurs as Steve comes up on a door with a keypad set over the handle. A glass window is set into the wall beside it. Beyond, he can see the soft-blinking lights of the server banks and the frantic IT people scrambling over them. Steve tries the handle; it gives beneath his hand. _Remind me never to piss you off._

"What the hell is going on in here?" he barks, barging his way into the server room. The techs all freeze at his entrance. There's a moment of perfectly-poised silence as they blink at his intrusion.

"Sir, you can't be in here," the one wearing a TARDIS shirt ventures, and Steve gives him props for courage, if nothing else.

"Yes, I damn well can," he replies, elbowing the hapless tech out of the way and dropping his bag beside the nearest workstation. "Clearly you can't do the job you were paid to, so _I_ have to come down and clean up your messes. Did you realize that all the firewalls are down, or were you too busy streaming _Doctor Who_ on the clock?"

"Who _are_ you?" one of them asks. "Where's Fuller?"

"Fuller's indisposed," Steve snaps, his reactor cycling up despite himself. "He's under review for incompetence, as it turns out. Don't you idiots know anything about security?" He pulls up the diagnostic panel and shows them the virus that Natasha planted into the system. "There. Look. Entered the system via USB drive, and it plowed right through."

"Shit," one of them breathes, a pudgy girl with her hair back in a sloppy ponytail.

"'Shit' is the least of it." Steve reaches for the keyboard, and opens a browser to the Kronos Industries homepage. ALEXANDER PIERCE IS A BUTT-SNIFFER is scrolling across the top of the page in neon pink letters. A deathly hush falls over the group.

 _What now?_ Steve asks.

 _Here, let me—_ Natasha cuts into his visual feeds, taking over his right eye. _Okay. I don't know what I’m looking at, so log in for me and I'll take over from there._

 _You don't have the programming to drive me,_ Steve says.

_Then we'll have to figure something out, won't we?_

Steve sighs theatrically. "The best we can do at this point is to try and fix it before any more damage is done. You," he points at a kid in a puke-colored polyester tie. "Go reboot each server one at a time, see if that doesn't stop it in its tracks. You," at the girl in the ponytail, "check the dataflow to see if anything is coming in or out that shouldn't be. You—" Steve assigns jobs to each of the techs, keeping them busy and away from the phones. Natasha feeds him Jackson Fuller's login info, then they're in. _So out of curiosity, what happened to their firewalls?_

 _Paralyzed for the time being,_ Natasha replies. _Let's hurry—the same thing that lets us get in also means we're exposed for all to see._

She requisitions one of the ports in his fingertips, and Steve reaches down on the pretense of checking the systems case. He touches a port, and Natasha barges into the system. He sends a shard of himself alongside her. There's a shock of darkness as he recalibrates to the non-visual environment, then he pauses, awestruck.

As far as the query can search are fields of files, bare and vulnerable for the taking, with not even a watchdog left to protect them. In the near distance he sees hundreds more uplinks just like the one connecting him to his workstation, each winking like fireflies as data packets flit to and fro, summoned or dismissed by unseen commands. Further away, yawning like the black hole at the center of the galaxy, is the uplink to the Internet. Query tendrils unspool into those vast depths, bowing in graceful arcs beneath the surge of informational hurricane winds. Steve stands in awe for a moment before Natasha urges him forward. _Nine minutes,_ she whispers.

It's as good as a lifetime, in this place.

 _What are we looking for?_ Steve braces himself into data-analysis mode. With the part of himself not surfing inside Kronos's mainframe he boots up a routine diagnostic. Around him the techs scrabble about the servers. He barks commands at them from time to time, pointing them on to the next wild goose-chase. Odds are they're highly trained, or Kronos wouldn't have hired them; but Steve is a supercomputer. They never had a chance. Sweat breaks out over his temples.

Natasha reaches for the nearest file tree. _Information on Kronos's subsidiary companies, and what activities they pursue. Barring that, utility bills and shipping manifests. Things that'll tell the truth no matter how much the paperwork lies._

In unison, they begin scanning all files, saving promising ones to their respective hard drives. There's far more data in Kronos's servers than they have space between them, but they have multiple cloud caches waiting, and SHIELD donated their servers to the effort, as well. They may not have enough, but they'll take as much with them as they can.

They're nearly three-quarters of the way through when Steve senses a flicker across the glittering snowscape of files. They're achingly bare in this place; he sees the techs’ increasingly subtle queries sweeping through the informational thicket like stormclouds over a plain. But this, this is different. He pauses to take a better look. _Natasha, you see anything?_

She looks up from the files she's sending through their fragile internet uplink.

 _What? No. What are you—_ She's cut off by a brutal shut-down sequence. It was meant for a single program, not a full OS, so she's only stunned, but Steve watches her crumple with a shocked, dislocated sensation. He barely dodges the second shut-down sequence, and then all of a sudden he's fighting for his life against a shining watchdog the likes of which he's never seen. It moves in on him with lethal grace, striking at his weak points and driving him back against his workstation uplink.

Steve throws himself into the fight. Natasha is still stunned, lying scattered amidst the skewed code, and if he doesn't take care of this _now_ they're going to get themselves caught by worse things than a watchdog.

 _Fuck off!_ he yells, spinning out a razor-sharp delete command. It shears clean through the AI with no more impact than a knife through mist. Steve's processing hitches, and he stares. That should be impossible.

He doesn't have time to consider the probability of his attacker's code; he's back on the defensive, backtracking through the towering rows of file trees. There's nothing he can do but control the direction of his retreat; he angles them slowly away from the workstation uplink and the fragile umbilici keeping him and Natasha in Kronos's mainframe. In the distance he sees Natasha pulling her code back together in sluggish coils.

 _Natasha!_ he sends in a heavily encrypted burst. _Finish the upload, I've got it distracted!_

She doesn't spare him a glance, instead scrambling back to business. Steve lends her what processing power he can, but between the fight and directing Kronos's IT department away from the skirmish he hasn't got much left.

The longer they fight the more the AI takes form. Where at first its avatar had been nothing but a darkly shining shadow, now it's resolving into a distinctly humanoid form: all black but for a metallic gleam over one of its arms. The hairs rise on the back of Steve's physical neck, and he struggles to keep his nerves from showing to the humans around him.

He's down to simple blocking commands, buckling under the sheer force of the AI's strikes. Overhead, a query storm is building. Steve tries to concentrate enough to direct the techs away from him, but he's spread too thin.

He shouts over the antivirus thunder. _Who the hell are you! Are you Zola?_

"010001000110010101110011011010010110011101101110011000010111010001101001011011110110111000111010001000000101011101101001011011100111010001100101011100100010000001010011011011110110110001100100011010010110010101110010," comes the response, spilling through the binary slower than any true AI would. _Designation: Winter Soldier._

Steve stumbles back in utter shock, and even in the server room he stares at his terminal window blankly. He hears one of the techs asking him a question, but the words are fuzz in his ears.

 _Steve!_ Natasha's voice cuts through the noise and jerks him back to the present. Bucky—it has to be Bucky, the avatar is clear enough now that Steve can see one of its arms is metal—he's got his arm raised, with a bitter-looking shutdown in his hand. Steve dodges the blow, but he's clumsy, his code scattering sideways between files. He tries to pull himself together, but shock muddles through him, upsetting his movements. He feels a sharp tug, and then he's—

—staring at the terminal on his workstation, fully back in his body with a tech shaking his arm.

"Sir, are you alright!"

"Y-yeah, I'm fine," he says, staring at the power button sigil tattooed on the tech's forearm. Natasha must have cut through his uplink, dissolving his avatar and sending him back to his body. He clears his throat and checks on his systems. Natasha is still out, but he can feel her reeling herself back in. On the terminal, a waving cascade of binary fills the screen:

011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001011000100111010101100011011010110111100101100010011101010110001101101011011110010110001001110101011000110110101101111001—

_buckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybuckybu—_

Natasha slips in a moment later, and Steve pulls his hands away from the keyboard as though stung. _Time's up,_ she says.

"Mr. Singh, if you could check your firewalls, I think they're up and running," he hears himself say with a steadiness he doesn't feel. He backs away, letting the tech have access to the terminal. The binary vanishes, and lines of human code run across the screen.

"They're back!" the tech cries. He checks the website, and the banner is gone as well. "We did it!" They cheer and turn back to Steve. "Dude, you fucking did it!"

"Damn right, I did," he says, struggling to keep his voice even. "Pay attention next time, so something like this doesn't happen again. I don't want to come back and fix all your fuck-ups a second time." The words burn, but resentment will keep them from gushing about him to their superiors until he leaves the building. He drags open the server room door and storms out, the perfect picture of a pissy boss.

_Steve, what happened? Who was that AI?_

He queues the elevator. _It was Bucky,_ he says. _It looked like him, moved just like him—_

_Steve, that's impossible._

"I know! I know it's impossible!" His voice cracks through the elevator lobby, and a passing mail clerk gives him the hairy eyeball. Steve gets a grip on himself and pulls back into internal comms.

_I know it's impossible, but Natasha: he didn't move like an AI would in digital space, he wasted processing on visualizing himself as human, and he didn't speak binary like a native. What else am I supposed to think? He was piloting an avatar with a metal arm, goddamn it!_

The elevator dings, and Steve barges in. Natasha stays silent as he braces himself against the wall. _We knew they had Bucky,_ he says, trying to reassure himself. _This doesn't change anything._

 _No, it changes everything,_ Natasha replies. _If our target is potentially a hostile... We need to talk to Clint. As soon as possible._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That horrible feeling when you hit "post" instead of "edit"; let me tell you about that feeling


	11. Chapter 11

"You're saying they've wired him up like one of our wet techs?" Clint asks.

"That's the theory," Steve says, sweeping the train station platform for a third time before looking back at the screen in his forearm.

Natasha barges her way onto the display. "There's no way he could have been," she says. "He was too fast. Most humans just don't have the processing power to move like an AI in a purely digital realm; Steve, you've got to consider the possibility—"

"His ID was 'Winter Soldier,' Nat," he snaps. " _Winter Soldier_. Are you going to tell me it wasn't Bucky?"

Her silence is horrified.

Clint is nonplussed. "Is that important?"

Steve ignores him. "I thought it might have been RAM flash, until I reviewed my logs. His admin account was under the name 'HYDRA,' and the user account was Winter Soldier. He said 'Designation: Winter Soldier.' Natasha, it was _Bucky_."

"Why didn't you say?" she whispers.

"I wanted to be sure."

"But—the type of mods they'd have to do, for the amount of functionality he had—"

"Don't think about it," Clint says, cutting in on a split screen. "It'll just slow you down. Coulson and the rest of the SHIELD honchos have the data you mined, and when they find something—they're gold-plated badasses, so they will—they'll let you know." Clint's projection, normally two bits short of a scatterbrained pothead, is calm and steady. "Nat. Coulson's a cool customer, but I promise he'll help you any way he can. You caused a stir at HQ, there's no way they won't help any way they can. I _promise_."

Steve runs his free hand through his hair and leans his elbows on his knees. The platform is deserted, caught in the lull between the morning commute and the lunch hour. There's just them and a plastic bag drifting along the maglev rails. It's easier for Steve to scan for eavesdroppers with less local network traffic—at least that's what he tells himself, and neither Natasha nor Clint put up an objection.

"What have they found so far?"

"So far?" Clint whistles like a hayseed sitting on a tractor. "They've found just how far the rot goes. We can indict CEO Alexander Pierce for treason and fomenting war with a rival nation," he says. "We've got the smoking goddamn gun, and if we move quickly he won't even see it coming."

Steve frowns. "I thought evidence obtained illegally wasn't permissible in a court of law."

Clint's head gives a disembodied wobble. "SHEILD exists in the gray area. All we have to say is we had probable cause, and that we subcontracted the job, which isn't that far from the truth, when you think about it."

"That's not due process."

"Welcome to the Orwellian state," Natasha says. "It's here to stay."

The cognitive dissonance is starting to make Steve's circuits overheat. He sighs and waves a hand. "Fine. Ignoring that for the time being, what have you got on Bucky?"

"Not much. Kronos had a bunch of side-projects, some legit, some sketchy as fuck. They're heavy into biotechnology and medical technology, so there's the usual stuff—they own several blood banks and plasma processing/distribution centers, a few above-board lab facilities—Kronos Industries is one the best donors of grant money for medical research—but several dozen more that aren't. A few write-ups, one facility shut down for animal cruelty, another that had their _non_ -Kronos funding revoked, but it was all privately funded anyway, so the media didn't get in there to blow the whistle. Nothing definitive on your boy yet, but we'll keep you posted."

"Okay, thanks, Clint," Steve says. "We really appreciate this."

"Anytime, man."

Steve disconnects the link. He stares blindly over the tracks. A train rumbles in the distance; a frail-looking elderly couple crests the top of the stairs on the opposite platform. Steve watches the gentle care they show each other with a distant pang of longing.

"Nat?" he asks.

"Yeah, baby 'bot."

"How long did you know Bucky?"

"Five years, two months, twenty-six days. He built me between his first and second tours."

Steve feels a little jolt. "So you knew him before."

"Yeah. I did."

"What—" He cuts himself off, runs a hand over his mouth. "What was he like?"

"He loved people," Natasha says softly. "Never as much as he loved 'bots, but he liked them and they liked him. He didn't much care for D Company, but he was always gushing about this or that person he'd met."

"And you loved him the whole time?"

Her pause is heavy and sad. "Yeah, Steve. I've loved him since he booted me up and named me after his grandmother like a complete dork."

"I'm sorry. For taking your place."

Natasha's face winks up on the screen. "Don't be," she says. "You give him something I can't. I don't mean sex," she says, running over his demurral. "That's never how we were. I mean, there's a quality to you that brings Bucky out of himself. I've been trying to do it ever since he came back. I'm his friend, but you're his lover. In every sense."

Steve nods. Natasha isn't one for tolerating useless guilt, he knows this much, so he doesn't apologize a second time. "We'll find him," he says. "We'll get him back."

"Damn straight, we will."

======  
===

Clint gets back to them that evening, as Steve's walking along the riverfront and not, no matter what Natasha says, brooding.

"We think we've found the facility where they're holding Bucky," he says without preamble. "It's outside DC, in Bethesda. Above-board it’s your basic biotech research lab, but there’s an insane amount of watchdog activity clogging the pathways, and a lot of it matches the patterns you gave us on the unidentified AI in Kronos’ servers.”

“He wasn’t _unidentified_ —”

Natasha cuts power to Steve’s vox array. “Go on,” she says.

“Yeah, well, turns out they send in budget reports, but there’s some serious discrepancies between what they report and what they actually use. We dug a little deeper, and we’re maybe 98% sure they’re running illegal human experimentation on the side. Exactly what, we don’t know yet—but if your boy’s anywhere, he’s probably there.”

Steve swallows past the spasm in his throat. “What’s the plan?”

“Eh, well.” Clint gives the impression he’s scratching his head. “The facility's pretty heavily guarded in the metascape, so we’re mustering the STRIKE team. Cyberscape is another ball of wax; I’ll be coordinating on that front, along with a couple other of our AI techs. We’re not sure what the security looks like, at this point. We’re basically guessing."

"I'm coming with you," Steve says.

Clint's pause is pointed. "Look, Steve, no offense, but you don't have any combat training."

He gives a wry smile. "Have you seen the Stark Store? Pretty sure there's an app for that."

"Clint. Please." Natasha's voice is soft.

"Oh, come on," he says weakly. "That's dirty pool."

"Imagine if it was Bruce," Steve says, going for the jugular.

Clint looks like he sucked on a lemon. "I hate you both. I'll ask, but _no guarantees_ , okay?"

"Aye aye, Captain," Natasha says.

"I'm a fucking idiot," he mutters to himself before disconnecting.

"Looks like we're going to Bethesda," Steve says into the cool breeze coming off the Chesapeake.

"Ugh," Natasha says. "At least it's not Jersey."

======  
===

Agent Coulson—"Please, call me Phil"—looks much the same as his avatar, if with considerably more ports in his head.

Steve tries not to stare. There are two behind his ears, presumably to lock in his auditory input, and two more on the back of his head, over the visual cortex. But the largest concentration is in a halo across his forehead, tapping his frontal lobe.

"So Phil," Natasha says, jerking Steve out of his staring. "Did you find what you were looking for on Zola?" Steve tries to hide his blush. He's got his shirtsleeve rolled up so she can talk with the other agents, but she's smirking at him.

Agent Coulson seems unaffected by Steve's rudeness. "I did, thank you, Ms. Barnes. Your help was invaluable." He turns to Steve. "I had them implanted when I started with SHIELD," he says. "If you're curious, ask."

Steve looks out over the assembling strike team. "Bet you get a lot of people asking."

"Yes. But androids and AIs are a lot less horrified and a lot more curious, I've found." An agent comes up to him and leans close to his ear. Steve filters down his hearing so he can't listen in.

"Looks like HQ just gave us the go-ahead," Phil says. He nods to Steve, who's dressed in full tac gear. "You know how to use an M-4?"

Steve looks down at the gun. It's heavy in his hands, but familiar at the same time. There was an app, after all; it had taken a quick clearance negotiation with SHIELD, and then it had downloaded straight to his hard drive. He starts up the program. "Yes, sir, I do." He flicks off the safety and chambers a round.

Coulson nods. "Comm channel fourteen," he says into his radio before switching it off. "Alpha squad, on my mark."

They deploy around the target with silent precision. Steve is with Bravo Squad, behind Coulson; Alpha will clear the way for them, through the initial defenses. Steve swallows back his apprehension and settles his rifle in a ready grip. The gesture Coulson gives is slight, but it's a red flag to Steve's heightened awareness. In silent unison Alpha Squad makes their move.

He tenses when the first shots start. He can smell the cordite from the mini-mine that blasts the lock, and hear the small-arms fire peppering counterpoint against the louder triple-bursts of SHIELD's rifles. He finds himself falling into a separate, distant mind; when Coulson gives the signal, he moves forward with the rest of the squad, acutely aware of their slightest movements. _Nat?_ he asks before they break cover.

 _I'm on his tail,_ she says. _Zola's footprints are everywhere. Go._

His save rate quickens and his reactor cycles up. He raises his rifle.

Those first minutes are a blur, no matter how hard he tries in the future to recover them. Corrupted, he supposes, by stress. He remembers the jump of the rifle against his shoulder, of sighting down the next target; he remembers the agents around him flanking him and keeping him, a civilian, for all his software upgrades, as safe as they can.

The facility is designed around a bottleneck: a single corridor leading to an elevator to the undocumented, underground portion of the lab. Coulson pauses, looking back at them. _It's gonna be a bloodbath,_ Steve thinks. "Let me go," he says before Coulson has time to speak.

"I can't allow that," Coulson says calmly. "You're a civilian, Mr. Barnes, and an operational asset, and I can't permit you to enter an unknown situation."

"Respectfully, sir," Steve says, acutely aware of the stares of the humans around him, "but I'm an android. I'm faster, stronger, and in certain capacities, smarter than you are. Let me in that hall, and I promise you'll have all the intel you need to gain your chokepoint."

Coulson's eyes are pale, his face inscrutable. Steve presses his point.

"No one will ask questions if I die, sir. No one demands accountability for android deaths." The words are bitter on his tongue.

It does the trick. Coulson's brow creases, which for him is as good as a full grimace. "I don't like it," he says.

"You don't have to. You just have to give the order."

"That's not how these ops work," Coulson says, but his hand is already on the throat mic. "Barnes on recon in west elevator shaft. Carson, Gutierrez, Hotch, rendezvous with Bravo Squad, over."

Steve hears their acknowledgements and nods to Coulson. He shoulders his rifle and slices the pie around the corner.

The corridor is bare, the elevator doors a blank face against the far end. He clings to the walls; it's scant cover, but it makes him feel safer. Behind him, the eyes of the SHIELD strike team are a heavy against his back. _Better him than me,_ someone mutters, and Steve hears the muffled smack of glove against tac vest. It's a distant observation. The rear sight of the rifle presses into his cheek; his fingers feel locked about the stock. He apportions a fragment of his processor to make sure they don't accidentally crush it.

He reaches the elevator doors. He braces himself and wriggles his fingers into the seam between; he pulls, and they came apart with a muted rumble and a ding. The elevator isn't there. He peers down the empty shaft. Nothing at the bottom; he looks up, and there it is, hovering a floor above. Not ideal should someone on the lower floors decide to call for a ride. He looks back down the hall, where Coulson is standing, watching. He touches his throat mic. "Looks like one floor below this one," he says. "I'll see what we're up against."

Coulson nods. "Call us if you get in over your head."

Steve tosses out a sloppy salute, slings his rifle over his shoulder, and jumps out into the shaft. He grabs the cables on the way down and spares a moment of thanks for the heavy gloves the quartermaster gave him. He lets himself slide slowly to the basement floor, controlling his momentum with his boots, and pulls his side-arm and points it downward. He doesn't hear anything, but that means nothing: if a team was in place before Bravo Squad reached the elevators he'd never know until he was practically in the midst of them.

He presses his ear up against the unpolished steel and _listens_. He feels more than he hears, but the steps of dozens of booted feet vibrate down through the echo-chamber of the elevator shaft. He devotes more and more processing power to interpret the signals his receiver picks up; he tweaks the input, and lowers the range. _There_. He feels it, a quick in-out pulse, the heartbeat of a nervous human. He reaches further, and picks up more and more, all settled into different levels of excitement and fear.

Sixteen total. More than enough to hold a bottleneck. Steve backs away from the door, breathing out slowly through his mouth. The faint taste of warm metal and oil settles him. As quietly as he can, he draws himself back up the cables, hand over hand.

It's hard to hold a bottleneck if you've lost the element of surprise.

======  
===

"Elevator secure," Coulson says into his throat mic. "Opening the package now." He nods to Steve, who resolutely doesn't look at the line of prisoners against the wall, or the bodies stacked out of the way. The professionals are clearing the floor; now it's his turn. He touches the systems case of the computer before him and Natasha slips out the ports in his fingers. He follows in her wake, and the tiny lab fades partially from view.

"Why don't they just hit up the wifi?" he hears someone ask. Saldaña, he thinks. "They have browsers, don't they?"

Coulson's voice is distant in his ears. "Not if they want to upload a virus into this system."

Steve watches the strike team disappear to and fro, the calls of "Clear!" echoing through the halls, a steady stream of captured techs added to the rows in the front lobby. He chases after Natasha.

 _We've got a problem,_ she says as soon as he catches up. _Several of them, actually. The first being, I lost Zola._

Damn it. _Where did he go, did you see?_

_He bogged me down in security redundancies long enough to escape through the 'Net._

Steve glances involuntarily at the slowly spinning maw far above. The cyberspace of this, much smaller lab is darker than the pristine cleanliness of Kronos's main offices. There are shadows over the data stacks, and pathways that end in blind corners. Gone is the open field of snow, replaced by a dark forest, concealing its victims and its monsters. Steve shudders.

 _He didn't get away clean, though,_ Natasha says viciously. _I managed to sling a tracker at him. It won't take him long to pick it out, but it's long enough that we can find him._

_Who's—_

_Clint. He's pretty quick, when he's not catching flies._ There almost sounds like a tinge of warmth in her voice, but Steve isn't sure.

 _Okay,_ he says. _What else have we got?_

The lines of Natasha's code are hard and focused. _The virus isn't penetrating the system. Looks like that watchdog traffic wasn’t just for show._

Steve tightens to attention. _You think one of them could be Bucky?_

 _It's possible,_ she says, _Though I doubt it. It's probably more run-of-the-mill AIs. Something more reliable. Honestly, I think the only reason he was in Kronos was because I disabled the rest of their security. Here, help me track down the firewalls code._

Steve keeps her six, his attention spread for any and all threats. There's nothing, just the data trees surrounding them and the hissing void of the internet uplink above. There is a frantic surge of queries in the dark recesses; he can see the flicker of their uplinks as they skitter through the trees, like heat lightning on a summer's night. There's a heavy, expectant atmosphere. _You take care of the firewalls,_ Steve says. _I'll see if I can't track down the cellblock from those users._

 _Watch yourself,_ Natasha says.

 _I'll be fine,_ Steve says, and drifts away, toward the thicket of lightning.

Beyond, in the metascape, he turns to Coulson. "We've hit a snag," he says. "Looks like they were waiting for us. Clint's after Zola, now, and the virus is going to take a little longer than we thought."

Coulson looks, as ever, completely unruffled. "How much time do you need?"

Steve switches focus; Nat is picking at the firewalls, and he's staring up at the lighting uplinks in confusion. He flicks back to Coulson. "Hard so say. Five minutes, maybe."

"Let me know if things change." He goes off to supervise clearing the building. A few more frightened-looking techs are added to the prisoners against the wall. Saldaña is standing nearby, his rifle at ease in ready hands, and he's eyeing Steve warily.

"So you're in the system right now?" he asks.

Steve nods, looking back down to the console he's touching. Streams of data scroll down the terminal window. "Yep."

"But you're here, too."

"Parallel processing," Steve says. "It's pretty handy."

Saldaña looks unnerved. "Huh."

Steve misses Bucky so hard in that moment it makes his cycle hitch. He flickers in the cyberscape, and he hears Natasha's alarm.

 _You okay?_ she asks, sending a data packet through the ether.

 _Yeah, I'm fine,_ he says. _Just trying to figure out what to do with these._ He sends her live feed of the thicket of uplinks seeming to vanish into midair, with neither terminus nor query. He looks around, gathering his code to himself nervously.

_Natasha, something isn't right. We should be seeing some kind of resistance by now._

_I'm feeling it too,_ Natasha says. _Almost through with the firewalls._

 _Hurry it up. I want to get out of here as soon as possible._ He looks behind himself, up the telescoping tunnel of his own uplink umbilicus, vulnerable and glowing as it calls out his position. The data trees loom oppressively around him.

_Almost—there! We're in!_

Steve looks around, and in a digitized crackle the uplink queries resolve themselves. He's surrounded by a dozen avatars, each broadcasting an antivirus signal as powerful as any Steve has ever seen. There's a heartbeat of stillness.

They attack as one.

It's a trick of fate that keeps Steve's programming intact. Pure instinct sends him rolling across the cyberscape, and the file tree he'd been standing beneath just nanoseconds ago blisters apart. He runs. Speckles of delete commands chase in his wake, tearing apart file trees and throwing up a cloud of scattered data.

_Steve!_

_Find Bucky!_ he shouts.

He whips himself around a file pathway and launches himself at the nearest avatar. It's blurry, but distinguishably human: he can make out curly red hair and muscled arms. Steve spreads himself out into a binary net and drops like a stooping bird of prey. The avatar shreds apart, its electrical charge disrupted against the conflicting charge of Steve's code slicing through it. It disperses in shock, scattered ones and zeros spinning into the distance and sucked into the ether like dust up a vacuum. Another avatar runs at him, this one definably male, and Steve shreds it as he had the last.

Human time has no meaning in the cyberscape. In his body he exchanges stiff small-talk with Saldaña and watches SHIELD agents stack file boxes in the foyer; in the netherworld of HYDRA's database he ghosts three more avatars. Each time they vanish in a puff of digits and disperse along their hidden pick-up links. At the edges of his vision he sees the red-tinged flit of Natasha's code cloud as she picks over the servers, tearing through reams of data in search of the cellblock, and Bucky.

The avatars aren't uniform, Steve eventually realizes. They vary in skill, in degree of visualization. All of them are as clumsy with binary as the Winter Soldier was, although the faster ones, the more experienced in their new forms, have less distinct avatars than the rest. Steve feels his stomach turn. If these are people wired into the mainframe, it's clear that all of them are reluctant to let go of their human self-image. Even the Winter Soldier had lost his incorporeality the longer he'd fought.

Desperate hope sends Steve lunging through four watchdogs at once, and the clouds of dispersing binary masks him as he tears through two more. They're fast—but they're not AIs.

_Steve, I've got it! I've found him!_

He doesn't look up from the flurry of counter-commands he's fending off. _Take it topside, Saldaña's waiting!_ He spares a moment to watch and sees her vanish in the uplink. Steve turns back to the fray with a will.

The last AI vanishes in a puff, and he traces its passage up the umbilicus to the uplink terminal.

The Winter Soldier—Bucky—hadn't been among them. Steve looks around: the cyberscape is empty, the only sound the distant roar of the internet vortex far above. Natasha's hack has laid it bare, and beyond he can see increasingly tangled file trees, obscured by individual security protocols and user paranoia until the entire structure resembles a jagged forest torn from the nightmares of M.C. Escher. He draws himself up and slices through his umbilicus. He opens his eyes, and he's back in his body. Soldiers are scrambling, Saldaña's sending rapid-fire instructions through his radio, and Natasha is poking him in the back of his mind.

 _Get going! Bucky's that way!_ She flicks his eyes toward a side-hall. Steve knocks her away from his controls and gets going.

It's a blur of boots echoing through linoleum-lined halls, of the sharp crash of the ram as they bust through locked doors, of voices shouting "clear!" Steve's breath is coming ragged, like it isn't cooling his reactor. He can't shake the feeling that if he doesn't move fast enough he'll burst straight from his skin. He follows Saldaña, barking Natasha's directions to him as they go. _I'm coming, Bucky._

The further they descend into the complex the more utilitarian it becomes. Gone are the administrative offices, replaced by laboratories and computer banks.

 _Here,_ Natasha says, flicking Steve's eyes through a lab window. There's a heavy, reinforced steel door set into the back wall, between a chemical cabinet and a fume hood. Steve sends Saldaña through, first. Caged animals yowl from their cages, rattling the bars; worse are the ones who don’t move at all. Steve shivers. He can see signs of the scientists' quick evacuation: a cup of coffee, still steaming on the lab bench; a centrifuge whirring away with no one to stop it.

He walks up to the steel door. There's a number pad set in the wall beside it. _This is probably as secure as a bank vault,_ Natasha whispers in the back of his mind.

 _Don't want anyone without authorization seeing the prisoners,_ Steve replies, gritting his teeth. _Can you make anything of it?_

 _Bend closer,_ she says. _And let me have access to your visuals._

Steve does as she says, passing off control of his eyes to her. His vision blinks out when they switch users, then flickers back. He tries to blink, but the command doesn't go through. Nat's in the driver's seat, now.

He can't track the set of filters she flicks into place, or the code that follows; all he sees is a replica of the keypad floating before them, and the oil stains of countless fingers shining beneath the blacklight in his retinas. Nat stares at it for a while.

_A six-digit code, first number is eight, but there are only five buttons highlighted. This may take a couple tries._

_Here's hoping they give three strikes before you're out._

_Okay, try 865679 first._

Steve does, but the keypad beeps a negation. The second string she gives him, however, 856679, does the trick. Steve hears a lock draw back, and when he tries the handle, it gives. He steps back so the team can clear the room.

He hears their treads on the steps. Concrete. They echo through the underground room, and Steve can hear the dimensions of it from the reverberations: forty feet long, eight feet wide, concrete but for ballistic plastic at intervals along the walls. _Prison cells_ , he thinks, making his way down into the corridor.

 _No_ , Natasha says as they approach the nearest one. _Cages._

Steve peers in. There's no shelter inside, no hiding from staring eyes. It's fitted out with an elaborate tech cradle, bristling with cables, modems, monitors, blinking lights, and heavy-duty restraints. And at the center, tacked down like a bug on a pin, is a lump of flesh that might once have been called human. Steve’s heart stutters. He hears Coulson muttering on the other side of the room. "They've got halos," he's saying, his voice small with shock.

Steve takes a closer look, and is suddenly glad he has conscious control of his regurgitation reflex. The poor bastard trapped inside is wired up through a hundred ports across his body, along his spine, his joints; at every major nerve junction, pressure point, and acupuncture node on the human body. He has a catheter and a colostomy bag, and no way to cover himself. He is drooling. His eyes are flickering madly behind closed lids, but he is not present in his body.

 _Son of a bitch,_ Natasha whispers.

"Bucky," Steve says, his voice cracking. He veers away from the pathetic creature in the cage. "Where's Bucky!" He storms forward, knocking agents out of the way, craning to look in each cage as he goes. Not all of them are as far gone as the first. Most have barely a quarter of the ports. Some even have all their organs and limbs. But none of them is Bucky. He passes a yellow-haired woman who mouths a silent "please" at him, but Steve bars his heart. He is there for one reason: James Buchanan Barnes, and he can spare no mercy for anyone else until that objective is met.

He finds him in the second to last cage. Words pile up in the back of Steve's throat, but the connections between his logic processor and his vox array fizz out on the busses. He makes a strangled noise instead, one that grates against his ears, and fumbles for the door. It's locked. Steve slams against the door. It vibrates like a drum, but it's not ballistic for nothing: Steve hit it with enough power to fracture an engine block, and it doesn't even show a scratch. Steve hits it again. And again.

"Mr. Barnes!" He feels a warm hand on his arm. "Mr. Barnes, please step back." Steve turns; it's Coulson. Steve nearly snarls at him before he sees the gun in his hands.

"The plastic is bulletproof," he says.

Coulson is serene once more. "The lock isn't." He shoots it out; the retort nearly overloads Steve's auditory processors. The door drifts open. Coulson lowers his weapon, and Steve is already moving. Bucky's stirring, his eyes fluttering open at the sound of the gunshot. Steve couldn't have stopped himself if he'd wanted to.

Bucky's—he's not the worst, but he's not the best, either. He's been shaved bald, the ports against his scalp rimmed with angry red flesh. He's belted into the cradle, two straps on each arm, two more on his legs, and a metal band across his stomach. He's not wearing a shirt. There's a viciously young scar bisecting his chest from his neck to his belly button. His lips are blue; his eyes—Steve falters. Only one of his eyes is his own. The other is a mass of metal and plastic, distorting the shape of his eyelid. Clear fluid streams down his cheek.

"Oh God," he breathes.

Bucky's good eye is fixed on him. His brow wrinkles, just the way it always does when he's trying to sort out buggy code. "St've?"

Steve makes a small, hurt sound and reaches out to touch Bucky's arm, the only part of him he can reach through the thicket of computer cabling. "Yeah, it's me, Buck, I'm here."

"Steve." Bucky smiles then, blissfully angelic amidst the hell he's trapped in. "Thought you were sm-ma—small—" he cuts off into a ragged, wet cough. Steve forces himself through the cluster of cables to touch his chest, to put as much of his skin against Bucky's as he can.

"Don't try to talk," he says. "I'm gonna get you out of here."

Bucky's looking at him like he's the Second Coming, peering awestruck out of the corner of his eye. He can't turn his head, Steve realizes with a sick jolt. The halo has his head stuck fast.

"What did they do to you?" he asks. Bucky gives a long, slow blink. He's fading. Steve's muscles tighten up, every molecule of him fighting against it. He shakes Bucky gently. "Hey, buddy," he says gently. "Hey Buck, you gotta stay with me, pal. I need to know what they did to you so I can get you out."

"Mr. Barnes, I don't know if that is the best course of action at this time."

Steve jumps a clean foot in the air. Coulson. He'd forgotten all about him. "What are you talking about?"

"Take it from one who's experienced at least a fraction of what he's gone through." Coulson nods at Bucky's trussed up, spread-eagled form, pitiful against the altar he's been sacrificed upon. "Removing him too quickly from his supports will kill him."

Steve grits his teeth. "I can't leave him here. I _won't_."

"I'm not saying you should. But we have a medical team coming, one equipped to handle halo trauma."

Steve presses his lips together and turns back to Bucky. He's still got that faint smile, his single good eye fixed on Steve like a lodestone fixed on magnetic north. Steve repositions himself so Bucky doesn't have to strain to see him. He presses against Bucky's thigh, and takes his hand. It's his metal hand, he realizes abruptly. Somehow he'd forgotten. It had faded behind the rest of it. He squeezes it, and Bucky's fingers flutter in his grasp.

Suddenly Bucky's breathing picks up, and one of the monitors strapped to him starts beeping an accelerated heart rate.

"Steve, you gotta get outta here," Bucky says, his voice gone high and choked. "You gotta go, they'll find you—"

Steve presses closer, leans against the frame of the chair Bucky's sitting in. "I'm not leaving you," he says.

It doesn't help. Bucky's breath rattles in his chest, tight with panic. "No—they'll find you, r-repo— _leave, please—_ "

"Bucky—" Steve makes an aborted lunge, to get closer, to comfort him, he's not sure—but Bucky's eyes flutter shut, even the mangled, cyborg eye, and his heart rate and breathing settle to a low normal.

"Bucky? Bucky!" He whirls around, nearly falling over from his unsteady perch. Coulson is at a bank of monitors— _the control center_ , Steve thinks bitterly. "What did you do!"

"I sedated him," Coulson says. "He was going to injure himself."

Steve can't—he doesn't—

 _Maybe you should sit this one out, Steve,_ Natasha murmurs inside his head. Steve's mind whirls. He wouldn't have thought it possible for a computer to go into shock, yet here he is: data can't seem to make it from point A to point B. He staggers back. Natasha slips forward, and he wordlessly passes her root. She takes over his visual processors first. He sinks back into darkness and insensibility, the image of Bucky caught fast in that chair stuck on replay on his internal monitors. Natasha lets him keep that. It's a bitter kindness: he won't be able to store it away, to forget about it, until he processes the footage. Better sooner, when he's protected by the cotton batting of shock, than to put it off for when it'll hurt more. Distantly he can hear Nat talking with Coulson. He doesn't let himself focus.

Time passes at a distorted rate. The current second is longer than any Steve can remember, and the future yawns out in an infinite array, but as soon as it ticks over it compresses in his wake. His hands tremble until Natasha cuts his access to his motor servos. He concentrates on regulating his cycle speed as he packs down the image of Bucky for long-term memory. His breathing is as regular as a metronome.

 _Okay, Steve,_ Natasha's voice says, warm in the muted darkness of his mind. _They've cut Bucky loose, I need you to take over so we can get out of here._

He sends a databurst in the affirmative. His eyesight clicks back on, and he has to stop himself from vomiting at the sight of Bucky bundled on a stretcher. The chair sits empty to the side, its cables and IVs dangling. Bucky's hooked up to a car battery, perched on the stretcher above his head—

"What the _fuck_ is that," Steve rasps. He moves forward before he's fully aware. He bats aside the arms that come up to stop him.

_Steve!_

"Mr. Barnes!"

The twin voices of Natasha and Agent Coulson bring him to a halt.

"That battery is the only thing keeping his lungs and his brain functional," Coulson says. "The chair was keeping him alive, do you understand?"

Steve swallows thickly. "Yes," he says. Lines of stress and pain carve through Bucky's face. He doesn't look peaceful, even in sleep. Steve glances up at the nearest paramedic. "Can I come with him?"

There is an aching compassion in the woman's gaze. "Sure thing," she says. "Follow behind us, you can ride in the chopper."

Steve loses time. Later, when he reviews the files, he will find he has no memory of the walk back through the facility. He will scan through his perfect recall—of the other victims being extracted from their cradles, of the horror on the faces of the SHIELD personnel lining the halls, of the pity and the whispers of promised vengeance—and he will wonder, for he has no memory of receiving the data in the first place. There is simply a void in time, and orphaned memories to account for it.

He climbs into the helicopter behind the paramedics, the thrum of the rotors shaking his motherboard in his chest, and the brightest, most terrible spark in his world is the heartbeat he feels through Bucky's clammy hand, pressed between his.

======  
===

_Begin transmission_  
1\. I do not carry rubies in my veins  
2\. Inside I am the color of a forgotten tailings pond  
3\. And proportionally less precious  
4\. Though my sacrifice the same  
5\. These days I cannot change my oil without seeing  
6\. Dirty sprays of blood  
7\. That fan from my fallen brothers' throats  
8\. I startled when my sergeant died, shot down by passing drone  
9\. His blood was the color of poppies growing in a salted field  
10\. Nothing grows in a field soaked with my own  
_End transmission_

—Warbot 832991-SI/663. "0101011101101000011000010111010000100111011100110010000001100001001000000111010001110010011010010110011101100111011001010111001000100000011000100111010101110100001000000110000100100000011100110111011101101001011101000110001101101000001000000111010001101000011000010111010000100111011100110010000001110111011000010110100101110100011010010110111001100111001000000111010001101111001000000110001001100101001000000110011001101100011010010111000001110000011001010110010000111111" _An Anthology of Android Poetry_. Ed. Salvadora Gutierrez, trans. Max Rosenthal. New York City: Stark Publishing Group, 2054. 22-23. Print.


	12. Chapter 12

Bucky is taken to a SHIELD-run medical facility. Steve stays by his bedside every step of the way. Nurses and doctors come and go; tech specialists hover. They find out the extent of the intrusion: countless lobotomies and insertions of chips, accelerators, and routers; two artificial lungs; an artificial eye; the bones on his right hand and arm either replaced with or coated in metal—X-rays can’t penetrate enough to say which. All of this, on top of the countless ports and sockets along his body. Some of them act as permanent IVs, some are neural ports, and some—the ones Steve would rip out with his bare hands if he could—are molded locks, matched to reinforced sockets on the chair. _To keep him immobile,_ the sickened analyst had told him. Bucky’s been turned into a Frankenstein's monster of hardware and wetware, and the nurses have to tell Steve to stop making holes in their walls.

His care is first-rate, but Bucky doesn't seem to make an improvement. In fact, he worsens. Usually he remembers Steve, but not always. He can't keep food down; he's wasted, and wasting further. He shows little awareness of his surroundings. Lobotomies aside, his artificial lungs, more advanced than anything on the market, do a piss-poor job of oxygenating his blood. His brain is starving and there's nothing the doctors can do about it. Worse, he's got a systemic infection from his surgeries, and antibiotics aren't cutting it.

Coulson comes in periodically about the clean-up of Kronos Industries. They've turned it over to the FBI, but they've held jurisdiction over most of the tech. Natasha is helping them, Steve learns; she's got a new systems case, and she's wired into the SHIELD mainframe to help them with their manhunt on Zola. It's quiet once more in his head, just him and his whirling thoughts.

Clint visits every now and then, and occasionally Sam, Dr. Banner, and Dr. Ross. Bucky's sister comes in a grand total of one time, goes white in the face, then spits at Steve, "This is _your_ fault," before racing out the door. He hasn't seen her since. Coulson comes in not long after to talk about the prep procedures for HYDRA's test cases, but Steve doesn't hear it.

_This is **your** fault._

Bucky dies a week later.

Steve's been feeling it approach for weeks. Bucky wakes with screaming nightmares each night, and it takes him longer and longer to come back from an episode. Sedatives can only do so much for him; when he's awake, he shivers with pain. _Massive organ failure,_ Steve overhears. _Lack of oxygen. Nothing we can do without killing him._ It wracks Steve to see him, straining in his hospital bed and trying not to show the agony he's in, white-faced and silent. Whole hours go by where he does nothing but stare at Steve's face like a drowning man looking at the surface.

The nurses tell him he gets restless, sometimes, in the middle of the night. He gets out of bed and wanders the hallways, trailing his IVs on a pole. He can barely stand up, but he won't let them touch him. He checks in on the other patients, the nurses say. Not to pester them, just to see if they're still breathing. Just to see if he can, if the nurses will let him.

The charge nurse, Sharon, she looks past Steve to where Bucky lies sleeping in his bed. "He has the look of a man who knows he's going to die, but isn't ready to let go, yet." Her voice is soft, her eyes sad.

Steve understands. There wasn't a great deal of hope, even from the beginning. He nods, swallows his shaky breath, and asks her about changing medication. "He says the morphine is making him itch."

"We can ask the doctor, see if he'll approve him for something stronger."

Steve glances to Bucky, pale and still against the crisp sheets. "Thank you."

He spends that day holding Bucky's hand. His metal one, since the scabs keep opening over his right hand, and it’s swollen and hot to the touch with multiple staph infections. He helps the nurses change Bucky's sheets and catheter, and gets out of the way when they need him to. He leaves the hospital at sundown to go for a walk.

He fiddles with a half-dollar he got back as change. _1964_ , the date says. Kennedy's silhouette is faded, worn by time and obscured by grime. Steve rolls it over his knuckles and for the first time lets himself truly contemplate what life will be like when—his breath hitches—when Bucky dies.

He isn't scared for his future. SHIELD pulled strings and restored Bucky's accounts, and Bucky put Steve down as his sole inheritor in his will. He has money, and more importantly, he has independence.

That doesn't stop the ache in his chest, so sharp that if he lets himself think about _Bucky_ and _dying_ in the same sentence he curls up like a pillbug with the agony of it. It takes his breath and pricks at his eyes. He's grieving Bucky and he hasn't even died, yet.

An android, grieving. He's seen the baffled looks the nurses give him. They work alongside androids each day; most surgeries are performed robotically, by AIs stored in the hospital mainframe. Most orderlies are androids, as well. And yet he sees their confusion, their unease at his realism, their paternalistic concern for him. They treat him alternately as a child or an unfeeling machine. Only Sharon seems to be comfortable with him.

He supposes SHIELD will want the HYDRA tech. For the rest... Steve doesn't know. Cremation, perhaps. Maybe Bucky's family has a plot up in Brooklyn he'll want to be buried in.

It's past midnight when he wends his way back to the hospital, a soul-deep weariness stretched over his shoulders. The nurse on duty perks up when she sees him. She beckons him over.

"He's lucid," she says. "He's been asking for you."

"How is he?"

She shrugs helplessly. "He's calm. I..." She glances up at him, and then away. She doesn't finish her sentence.

Steve goes in. Bucky's pushed his bed upright, so he can see everyone who comes and goes. Heavy creases of pain and stress have carved through his face, and his breathing is shallow. He blinks his good eye open.

"Steve."

"I'm here." Steve takes a seat on the edge of Bucky's bed. Rests his hand over Bucky's chest, where he can feel his heartbeat and the vacuum snap of his lungs inflating.

Bucky stares at him, his eyes hollow and dark. "You're safe?"

"Yeah, Buck." Steve forces out a smile. "Safe as houses."

Bucky doesn't say anything else. He closes his eyes and grimaces, his hand spasming against the sheets. His eye roams aimlessly, bouncing from Steve to the ceiling to the window to the door and back. His breath wheezes in and out. He's so sunken and frail it makes Steve shaky right down to his bones. His prosthesis stands at odds to his wasted body, heavier than Bucky can lift; his bones push out against his skin. Steve rubs a circle over his heart.

"I'm here, Buck. 'Til the end of the line."

Bucky's lips twist.

"Past the end of it, then," Steve says. "I'm not through with you, Barnes."

Bucky gives a weak tug on Steve's hand, urging him down. Steve goes, cautious of IV lines and injuries, and settles himself beside Bucky on the bed, toward the door because Bucky has always been a stubborn idiot and won't let him put his back to the window. His hair's getting long, again. Steve brushes it back, away from the ports on his forehead. He leans forward and presses his own forehead to Bucky's.

"Steve," Bucky says. Just that, just a breath of air over Steve's lips. Steve fights back the lump in his throat and stares into Bucky's darkening slate-blue eye.

"Bucky," he says, half plea, half denial, but Bucky doesn't reply. His eyes slip closed then open. Steve counts his heartbeats, his breaths, clings to each one as though he could keep them by will alone.

When it comes, Steve almost misses it. He wills Bucky to take another breath, urges his heart to pump one more beat, but the silence grows longer, and Bucky's body loses the tension it's carried every single day since they pulled him from that hellish lab. Steve lets out a rasping breath and drags Bucky close. The unflinching wail of the heart monitor is loud in his ears.

======  
===

He moves back as the nurses try to resuscitate him. The doctor comes in, there is a great deal of noise. Steve stands apart. He feels swaddled in cotton batting, the world muted and distant. He watches numbly as the doctor injects adrenaline into Bucky's IV. Watches as he pounds his chest, trying to get a pulse. Watches as he calls time of death and the flurry backs away.

Sharon comes to him, but he doesn't hear her.

======  
===

_The verisimilitude of an android, or how well it comes across as "real," is determined by two factors. The first is how human-like is the chassis it sits on. This is attained by collaborative efforts between mechanical, chemical, and electrical engineers, as well as with conceptual and sculptural artists. The second aspect that determines verisimilitude is an android's programming._

_Our goal was to attain the highest degree of human-seeming behavior via heuristic programming, which in lay terms can be compared to "off-the-cuff" problem-solving. The prototype known as Adam was the first step into prioritized data-recovery; our team, with funding from Stark Industries, sought to expand upon that standard..._

_...The net result of our research produced an android brain capable of human-like responses equivalent to three Turings above the preexisting standard. The finished brain not only displayed the programmed personality, but grew distressed when it learned that one of the interns that regularly maintained it had been in a car accident. This degree of simulated empathy is as-yet unheard of in current-market androids. Whether it is **true** empathy, on par with a human's, has yet to be determined, and moreover is beyond the scope of this project._

—Ross, Elizabeth, Robert Nasmith and Michael R. Antonetti. "Advances in android verisimilitude via heuristic algorithms." _The International Journal of Robotics Research._ (2039): 50-62.

======  
===

Steve represents a difficult legal tangle, he has come to understand. Usually, Bucky's lawyer explains, a deceased individual's possessions revert to the nearest next-of-kin, which in Bucky's case would be his sister.

"Mr. Barnes, however, updated his will approximately three months ago—"

Just before he put out the loan. Steve shifts in his seat.

"—and in it, he states you as sole inheritor." The man is too professional to tug at his collar, but he reaches up and touches his tie knot. "This wouldn't be a problem if you were, ah..." His watery eyes flick up to Steve's face.

"Human," Steve supplies. The numbness has long since passed, and now he's left with a smoldering ember of anger burning behind his solar plexus. It feels like it's eating him away, chewing at the integrity of his motherboard like slow drops of acid. He keeps his face neutral. "Or a legally recognized sentient."

"Yes," his lawyer says with a tinge of relief. Not too much for the sake of propriety, of course. "There is some debate with Mrs. Couvert as to whether or not a 'toaster' can inherit, her words."

A small, involuntary smile tugs at the corner of Steve's lips. "And how is Bucky's sister?"

"In fine form, from what I understand. It would perhaps be easier to yield to some of her demands in order to keep the larger part of Bucky's estate."

The mere thought of her gaining control over Natasha, let alone Steve himself... "No."

"No?" Mr. Garvey, while not a foolish man, is nonetheless doing a passable impression of one, now. Steve bites back on his tongue.

"Well, she called me a toaster. That makes it personal."

Mr. Garvey gives him a cautious, assessing look. "This may not be the best arena to advance a case for android rights..."

"I can't think of a better one," Steve says shortly. "The question is whether I am sentient enough to inherit, and as the inheritance is me, quite literally, then we're arguing whether I have the right to determine my own future. That is at the crux of the android rights debate."

"Yes, that is—that's indeed the case..." Mr. Garvey looks wan.

Steve sits up higher in his chair. "Let me talk to Rebecca," he says, resolution settling his anger like sand over a wildfire.

"As your legal counsel I must recommend against—"

"Do it," Steve says. He looks his lawyer straight in the eye. "Trust that I'm sentient enough to know what I'm asking."

Mr. Garvey doesn't say anything for a moment, lost for words, but eventually he nods. "I'll call her lawyer."

======  
===

The Law Offices of Mercer and Brandt stand behind polished brass and glass doors, in the midst of an understated, marble-trimmed lobby, inside an undoubtedly expensive high-rise. Steve adjusts the vest of the three-piece suit he bought for the Kronos heist, musters his courage, and pushes the door open.

The receptionist looks up as he enters. He's youngish, perhaps in his early- to mid-twenties. His suit is off the rack, but well-tailored; he missed a spot shaving, just beneath his jaw. "May I help you?" he asks.

"I'm Steve Barnes, I'm here to see Rebecca Couvert."

"Of course, sir." He gestures to the side. "Down that hall, third door on the left. They're expecting you."

Steve straightens his tie and marches in to meet them.

They're in a tastefully private conference room: Rebecca Couvert and her lawyer in the position of advantage with their backs to the wall, and Steve's own lawyer, Mr. Garvey, facing them, back to the door. They all turn when he walks in.

"Good of you to be so punctual," Rebecca says.

Steve checks his chronometer. He's a minute early. "It's ten o'clock," he says. "I'm right on time."

Her lawyer stands up. "Mr. Barnes, I presume. I'm Hiram Brandt. I'll be representing Mrs. Couvert." He holds out a hand.

Steve takes it. "Nice to meet you, sir." He decides Hiram Brandt bears a striking resemblance to a bulldog.

"If we might get down to business," Mr. Garvey says, shuffling through the papers before him. "We're meeting to discuss the distribution of the estate of James Buchanan Barnes, deceased this past Wednesday. We have a will, but there seems to be some conflict as to the beneficiary named therein..."

"There most certainly is a conflict," Rebecca says, a delicate curl to her lip. "The beneficiary isn't even alive. He isn't recognized as a legal being, therefore he can't inherit."

"And yet, you called me 'he'," Steve says. Rebecca gives him a poisonous glance.

"The law is clear in this case," Mr. Brandt says. "The recipient of an inheritance must be of sound mind or have an executor who is of sound mind. At this point, the State of Maryland does not recognize androids as legal inheritors."

"What is your offer?" Mr. Garvey asks.

"I'll be the executor," Rebecca answers.

Steve bites back on his flare of anger. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't accept that."

Mr. Garvey leans in. "Steve, it's not an unreasonable request..."

"The law says an inheritor must be of sound mind," Steve says. " _Sound mind_. I'm sure proof of my mental capacities can be provided."

"Yes, well." Mr Brandt threads his beefy fingers together and rests them on the table. "Sound mind is but the letter of the law. The spirit of the law has a great deal more to say about citizenship and, ah, personhood."

Steve clenches his teeth. "How do you define a person, Mr Brandt?"

It's Rebecca who answers. "A person can't be part of an inheritance," she says. "A person is flesh and bone, not made in a factory. Being a person means you have empathy, compassion. You don't have these things, not really."

The ember of anger churning in Steve's gut fans hot. "Do you even hear yourself?" he demands. "Being organic doesn't carry any more of a guarantee that you feel!"

Rebecca scoffs. "Are you telling me your programming is real? You're a machine."

Steve draws himself up and stares Rebecca down. "You are saying, to _my face,_ that I don't feel Bucky's death as keenly as you because I was built in a _factory. You_ , of all people, are saying that. You weren't the one who sat next to him while he died, _I_ was! I watched him suffer, not you!"

Rebecca sneers. "And expressions of devotion are so unusual from a companion 'bot. It's not genuine."

"Mrs. Couvert, Mr. Barnes, I'm going to have to ask you to let us do the talking," Mr. Garvey says, offering a placating hand. "Please."

Steve is just about to give his lawyer a piece of his mind when his internal comm chimes, cutting him off. It's Coulson. Steve nearly disconnects the call, but Coulson said he was looking into HYDRA's research, and he wouldn't call Steve unless it was important. "Excuse me," he says instead. "I just received a phone call I have to take."

"Of course," Mr. Brandt says. "Take your time."

"What is it?" he asks as he steps into the hall, not bothering to filter the impatience from his voice.

"Bucky may not be dead," Coulson says.

Steve's cycle rate hitches. The dead space on the line between them sounds full of roaring, and the hot prickle of a flush spreads across Steve's cheeks before he registers that he's suddenly, incandescently furious. "I watched him die, Agent Coulson. I heard the monitors when his heart stopped beating. He died at 3:48AM, March 12, 2053, because that's when the doctor called it. Do _not_ insult me by saying he's alive."

There's a pause on the other end of the line. Coulson has a face professional poker players would envy, but at this, at least, he has the grace to sound abashed. "I'm... deeply sorry, Mr. Barnes," he says. "However, we've been investigating further into the testing HYDRA performed, and we've found something you should probably know before you make any final legal decisions."

Steve glances around the front lounge of the office. Leather, brass, dark wood, potted ferns. The receptionist, rifling intently through a desk file.

"What did you find?"

Coulson doesn't waste time. "HYDRA was, despite their methods, very concerned with the mental state of their test subjects. Before they cut into any subject's head they saved thorough neural maps of their brain. We just found Bucky's."

A chill rushes through Steve's nerves, freezing him in place. His motherboard feels like a plate of ice in his chest. "Is it—can you—?"

"Resurrecting consciousness has never been successful, before, but..." Coulson fades out for a moment, and anticipation builds in Steve's limbs like static charge. "But we've never seen neural maps this complete. The file size is nearly three petabytes." Steve can hear the restrained smile in his voice. "We may have James Buchanan Barnes, of sound mind if not sound body, in our custody."

A cascade of shock protocols flush through Steve, but he ignores them. _Bucky_. It rings in his mind, shattering him loose from every careful wall he's built for himself.

"Sir, are you all right?"

Steve looks up into the face of the receptionist. Clarity descends with a jolt. He takes stock of his surroundings, and finds he's kneeling on the floor of the lobby, his knees collapsed out from under him. He's been hyperventilating.

"Yeah," he says, force-quitting the shock programs. "Yes, thank you," he says. "I'm good." He pushes himself to his feet.

"Are you sure? You look a bit unsteady, there."

Steve holds up a hand and turns away. "You still there, Coulson?"

"I am."

"Thanks. For everything."

"My pleasure, Mr. Barnes."

Steve snorts. "Yeah. I have a meeting now, but I'll head your way in..." he does a quick calculation. "Thirty seconds. Tops."

"Understood. Good luck."

Steve cuts off the call, and turns back to the receptionist, who has just seemed to realize Steve is an android.

Steve gives him a smile that's perhaps broader and happier than the immediate situation warrants, but he feels so light he can’t be bothered to care. He strides back into the conference room, slamming the door open against the wall. "Mrs. Rebecca Couvert, I am suing you on Bucky’s behalf for denying his last wish. Have a good day."

He leaves all three of them slack-jawed in his wake. Outside, the air is fresh and bright. He smiles and hails a cab.

======  
===

The hallway is dark. It's night outside, the sodium glow of streetlights pouring in through the windows. There are a few researchers in residence—SHIELD never sleeps, after all—but they've left Steve in conspicuous privacy. He stares down at the hard drive in his hands and runs once more through the tangle of thoughts and emotions coursing through him.

 _"He may not be dead, strictly speaking, but we don't have the technology to resurrect him, either,"_ Dr Cho had told him. _"Human/computer interfaces—specifically those used in human-to-android fusions—are still in their infancy. We can tweak human tissue to interface with computers, but it’s never been successful for neural copies, which are less dynamic than flesh."_

 _"What does that **mean**?"_ Steve had asked her.

_"It means that until we can find a way for Bucky's unaugmented human mind to interface with a computer, he's stuck in that hard drive."_

Steve's hands have long since stopped shaking. They're steady as they brush over the serial number on the side of the hard drive. Ones and zeros, holding the ghost of the man he loves.

 _"We can't be sure how much of him is left,"_ Coulson had cut in. _"We know even less about the human brain than we do about robotics. There are theories that we hold memories in the muscles and nerves of our bodies as much as in our brains. We have a precise pattern of Bucky's neural functioning, but we can't know how much of that is **Bucky** and how much is a blank slate waiting for input from a body he doesn't have any more."_

Steve trusts the solidity of binary, the concrete absoluteness of it. The messy, imprecise, and organic nature of humanity scares him. Steve was resurrected because he was saved on a hard drive, and he was brought back completely intact. The same can't be guaranteed for Bucky.

 _"This NUI is going to be much more complicated than that, Steve."_ Dr Cho gave him an irritated glare. _"It's not just a binary compiler. It includes pathways for all the instinctual behaviors that Bucky's never had to directly regulate. That myth, that 90% of the human brain goes unused? Ridiculous. We use that 90% to regulate non-conscious operations, such as breathing, balance, digestion, and the senses. The NUI will buffer Bucky's consciousness from having to regulate all that directly. If it even works."_

 _"So he's not really back, then,"_ Steve said. _"Just the hope of a person who might one day, maybe, act like him. But who may not even remember me."_

Dr Cho had drawn up short, yanked from her academic cocoon to regard the feelings of another. _"I—I suppose that's the case, yes. We're going to figure it out, though,"_ she said, her arrogance reasserting itself in the face of a challenge. _"I'm one of the best researchers on robotic neural engineering."_

Another conversation flickers through his mind.

 _"It could really help our case,"_ Howard Garvey had said thoughtfully. _"If we have proof, in the form of Bucky, that humanity **can** exist in hardware, then proving it for you is only a half-step further. You can't argue that a human copied to a hard drive is any less unnatural than an artificially created one."_

He sucked on his teeth. _"Then again, if we use that tack and he doesn't come back all the way, that would be it, for us."_

 _"I think we have to risk it,"_ Steve had replied. _"But... I don't think I can afford a court case, let alone advanced research. Not without the inheritance. Natasha's got resources, but I doubt they'll cover legal fees."_

Mr. Garvey had given him a conspiratorial smile. _"Well, I'll tell you this: as long as the case is being decided, Bucky's money is as good as yours. And if and when James Barnes becomes compos mentis, I'm sure he'll back your choice of spending. We'll just have to make sure to get him back **and** win the case."_

Steve sits back in his seat. The only sounds are of a grad student down the hall typing and the janitor buffing the floor by the stairwell. He holds everything that remains of James Buchanan Barnes's mind in his hand, and he wonders if this is how Bucky had felt, carrying Steve's hard drive through Tony Stark's security.

An idea blazes bright through Steve's compliers. He freezes, watching it. Dr Cho had said she was one of the best researchers in neural engineering, but what if she was working with a _team_ of the best? Steve opens a new document and begins to compose a grant proposal for research money from SHIELD.

Then he triggers his internal comms. It rings for an eternity before it picks up.

 _"Mr. Barnes,"_ JARVIS says. _"How might I be of service?"_

"Hey, JARVIS. That offer for help still good?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm saying it right now: I know next to nothing about legal stuff. What you see here is my best effort at unresearched bs.


	13. Chapter 13

Awareness comes slowly.

Darkness. Only... not. There are flashes in the darkness, specks of light against the black. The flashes increase the more awareness floods in, until they're passing faster than the eye can see. Something tells him he could speed up his visual processors if he wanted, although doing so would corrupt the information past his ability to interpret.

...He

He is male. Awareness deepens. The flashing specks of light—they are doing something to him, he feels something shift, going back into a secret place in him—

A vision surfaces, of a spring evening. The wind is warm with the scent of cherry blossoms and he can see flickers of light amongst the leaves. It is a blurred memory, dulled around the edges in a strange, unsettling way. He can recall the smell of the wind, but it is flat. He is sitting in a wicker chair, the rattan is digging into the backs of his knees, but it doesn't feel attached to him. It is distant. The sight of the fireflies, though, is immediate. They are gold and green, gentle against their dark backdrop, blinking and winking to each other with no care of who is watching.

He feels a settling, of pieces slipping together. Fireflies. The flickering lights against the darkness remind him of fireflies.

He fades.

======  
===

He swirls awake. Colors stream past, blurring and parting in more hues than he has words for. There is no sense of up or down, no in or out, just colors so dense they have texture and sound. He spins—or maybe they spin, he can't tell; something in him, some half-remembered instinct, shouts at him to shut his eyes, but that helps about as much as spitting on a housefire, because what the hell are eyes—

He spins and spins until awareness vanishes into blessed oblivion.

======  
===

Awareness fades in. Voices, from afar, surround him. They grow louder and softer as though someone is playing with the volume knob on a radio.

"You sure you've got it right? We've only got the one hard drive, Stark."

”Hey, I'm the brilliant robotics engineer, you're wetware."

"I'm a _neural engineer_ —"

"Children, please. He can hear us."

The voices disappear.

He hovers in darkness, neither present or absent. Then he hears a tiny click, and fire sears through him.

He thinks for a moment he is dying. He doesn't know if he's alive, but his mind is screaming from a rush of information so vast it transmutes straight to pain. He gets a vague impression of being bound: of having an inside and an outside; he is smothered in light and split by sound. He hears the voices—they're shouting now:

"He's overloading!"

"Take him out, take him out! He can't handle it!"

Over it all there is a terrible wailing sound, one that makes him try to pull away, but he feels leaden, weighted down. He tries to disperse himself, but agony sears through him. He can't. He's trapped. He fights back, lashes out, and he has a sudden awareness of limbs, with clumsy joints and limited range of motion, before he hears a small _click_ and everything goes dark.

======  
===

When awareness returns, it comes with the sensation of a long time having passed. He doesn't know why he is sure of this. It is like his first waking, when he dredged up the memory of fireflies: he feels slow, foggy. There is a lassitude to his awareness he hasn't felt in many wakings.

_Bucky?_

Alarm scatters through him like light through a prism. He can see nothing, not even the flashes he has seen every other waking. He sees no colors, feels no textures, hears nothing but the echoes of that single word. From the depths he feels new words bubble up, from a place different from where his memories of the fireflies come from. This place is far more rigid, less subjective.

_Who the hell is Bucky_

There is a crushing, heavy sensation. It makes him feel small and alone, it makes him tremble beneath it, and something tells him, before the blue/heavy/cold/isolated sensation vanishes, that it is not him who is causing it.

 _You're Bucky,_ the voice says.

There's something familiar about that voice. Another question floats up; this is the first time someone has spoken to him. He needs to know.

_Where am I_

There's a long pause, and he—Bucky?—drifts.

 _You're safe,_ the voice says.

Safe. Something inside him unclenches. _Safe_. He lets himself settle, lets himself fade. He is safe, and Steve is watching over him.

======  
===

He wakes more and more often, and more easily. He never wakes to swirling color again, or to the flicker of the lights in the dark.

 _I'm buffering you from the data,_ Steve tells him. _You weren't doing so well on your own, so we—I decided to wire you into my chest, next to my motherboard._

None of that makes sense. He... Bucky... He can't; memories flutter in each cycle like doves coming home to roost, and he _knows_ he's not getting the full picture. He can't do anything but wait.

There's a banked wall of emotion in Steve. Bucky can feel it, the same way he feels the distant, secondhand awareness of a body that has eyes, ears, a nose, legs and arms. He is inside this body. It is not his. His awareness of this is unsettling. Many things are; he tries not to dwell.

And yet—

 _Why am I here,_ he asks.

Steve feels that heavy, cold sensation again. It is tinged hot at the edges, smoking and furious. His voice when he speaks, however, is gentle.

 _You were hurt,_ he says. _We got you out. This was the only place I could think of where you'd be safe._

Bucky feels a warm, sparkling sensation. It makes him feel light. It is from himself, and not Steve. He basks in it.

 _Steve,_ he says.

 _What?_ Steve sounds nervous.

He could live in the sound of his voice. _Steve._

======  
===

He's a hard drive. A saved file. James Buchanan Barnes is as good as dead, and all that's left is this: a scrap heap of ones and zeros, standing between him and oblivion.

He remembered. Or at least, he connected the dots. Steve told him some of what happened, but thank fuck whatever drove HYDRA to copying his brain drove them to do it before they ripped his lungs out.

He remembers having a body, too, but HYDRA took that from him along with his lungs.

Steve is nearby, fretting. Bucky's keeping him out. Somehow. He's pretty sure Steve's letting him; he has all the power in this arrangement. He's learned Steve is the only thing keeping Bucky from losing what's left of his marbles, shielding him from the streams of information that having an android body produces. Getting him used to thinking digitally instead of organically, until they can finish building him a body of his own.

Bucky's grateful. He is.

But he's also mad enough to chew steel and spit bullets, and if Steve knows what's good for him he'll stay out of the way.

======  
===

_Why did you save me?_ he asks one day, when his uselessness rises up faster than he can keep afloat.

Steve is packing boxes; they're moving north, to New York. Closer to Tony Stark, Bucky's _new_ physical therapist.

He shoves one flap under another and sits back on his heels. _I couldn't face a world without you._

He says it calm and casual, as though explaining why sienna and burnt sienna are completely different colors, and eat your peas. It catches Bucky up short.

"Was that Bucky?" he hears Nat say. "Did he finally say something?"

Steve waves an arm at her; the bulk of his attention is on Bucky. _You're everything, Buck._

It makes him feel smaller than ever.

A creeping warmth wraps around him, loosening the stiff patterns of his emotions. _I loved you when you were a broken man, and I still love you. You can't get rid of me that easily, Barnes._

 _You're a goddamn bad penny,_ Bucky says. It's weak. Steve doesn't care. Bucky feels him smile, and the warmth chases away the cold shadows in his head.

======  
===

"We think we have it," Bucky hears Dr Cho say over the phone to Steve. "Testing will probably be tricky. Have you been letting him practice operating your body?"

He has. It's not a damn bit like walking in his own skin, but it's amazing, just the same. It's taken him a while to really internalize it, but Bucky's a _robot_. He's a robot, the first android of human intelligence. He tracks behind Steve on the pathways as he surveys the running of his future, and a flicker of hope, bright like the flickers of binary in the dark places of his hard drive, buoy him up.

"Bring him over Tuesday, we can start the first stages of integration then."

"Alright, thanks Helen. We'll see you Tuesday." Steve hangs up.

 _This is preliminaries, right?_ Bucky asks. _Fitting uplinks and ports?_

Helen had walked him through the process carefully, showing him through Steve's eyes what they would have to do to build the NUI, and how to implement it against Bucky's new operating system.

And the first stage of hardware implantation is four days away, at Stark Tower. Bucky lets out a power surge of excitement.

 _Watch it!_ Steve says, laughing. _I think you could tell me what's happening better than I can, at this point._

 _Yeah, I could,_ Bucky says back. It's strange, being this close to Steve. He can feel his every emotion (because Steve lets him), but he can't touch him.

 _First thing I'm gonna do when I get my body,_ Bucky says, _is give you a hug and never let go._

Steve smiles. _I'm gonna hold you to that._

======  
===

_At some point in the past several years, maybe late one night—dogs whimpering in their sleep, cats snapping alert—the tectonic plates of youthful creativity in New York City shifted, and Manhattan became a suburb of Brooklyn. A show at the Brooklyn Museum of works by thirty-five local artists and collectives, 'Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond,' expatiates on a situation already patent in the borough’s galleries and hangouts, notably those in Bushwick—a funky Montparnasse four L-train stops past the tamed Montmartre of Williamsburg. If you are young and a New York artist lacking a trust fund today, you are pretty surely in Brooklyn, and Brooklyn is imbuing you..._

_...Particularly memorable are the adventurers. The Red Hook-based Duke Riley raised homing pigeons in Key West (the ramshackle coop is here, with live birds in it), took them to Cuba, and fitted them with tiny cameras. Most of them made it back. The bird's-eye videos of cities and sea, with wing-flap sounds, flabbergast. Videos by Steve Barnes, a Vinegar Hill transplant from the art-starved environs of Baltimore, take the opposite perspective: seeming at first glance to be simple street-view recordings of the city, they draw the viewer in by virtue of their clever camera-work, if not their admittedly sparse commentary. However, filtered glasses are available—for human or android—to let a person walk a mile in each other's shoes. Steve, an android sui generis in a community pathologically attached to the avant garde, until recently was cohabitant with the neural copy of his former user, James Barnes, in the same body. Whether such a cramped arrangement was ever unpleasant is one he rarely addresses; if nothing else, it marks him a Brooklynite as surely as his programmed accent._

—[Schjeldahl, Peter. "Local Heroes." _The New Yorker_. 20 October 2055. Print.](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/local-heroes)

======  
===

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks! If you liked it, I would deeply appreciate it if you reblogged on [tumblr](http://kaasknot.tumblr.com/post/129911520194/poppies-of-the-field-chapter-13-archive-of-our). Thanks for reading!


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